Sheridan Morley

Wizard of Oz

Arguments with England: A Memoir

By

Faber & Faber 404pp £20 order from our bookshop

Interests to be declared: with the exception of the venerable Frith Banbury, I have known no stage director longer nor admired one more than Michael Blakemore. We first met in Sydney when I was eight and he was, I would guess, about eighteen. A doctor’s son determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps, he joined my father’s Australian road tour of Edward My Son as a publicist, only to find himself having to teach my sister and me how to read and write, since on the road in those days you were never anywhere quite long enough for a more formal education.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • He weeps by the side of the ocean, He weeps on the top of the hill; He purchases pancakes and lotion, And chocolate… ,
    • 'Half-way through The Conquest of Water I felt as if I had been subjected to the literary equivalent of excessive c… ,
    • 'Volume five, then, but still no end in sight. Sandbrook is clearly enjoying himself so much he can’t bear the seri… ,
    • 'By the end of the book something so weighty, stylish and impressive has been built up that one feels far nearer to… ,
    • 'Her ensuing psychotic episode is described so convincingly ... that the reader will wonder if Dobrakovová did not… ,
    • 'The perspectives complement and contest one another, amounting to a glorious, atmospheric set of ventriloquisms.'… ,
    • RT : I reviewed The Testaments for . I will not be taking any questions at this time. ,
    Follow Us