Sean O'Brien, The Bonfire Party (Picador) There was a time it seemed to me that once beyond the age of 60, poets either ground to a halt or began repeating themselves. If it's a rule at all it's one of the type that need exceptions to prove it. Exceptions... See more
It's a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Like listening to Jane Garvey and Fi Glover on Times Radio yesterday afternoon. They interviewed Maggie O'Farrell ahead of the film of Hamnet. It's a brilliant book, might well make a good film ... See more
The Captain's Daughter , according to the back cover of Pushkin's Novels, Tales, Journeys, 'has been called the most perfect book in Russian literature'. There will be time to wonder whether there are grades of perfection elsewhere. Not having read the wh... See more
I am indebted to my longest-standing friend for a recording of a performance by the Local Yokels in a live performance in Gloucester on December 31, 1975. Like many bootlegs of the period, it is rough and might benefit from a couple of day's worth of Abbe... See more
A few weeks ago I was wondering if The Woman in White had been the best book I'd never read. It wasn't, in the event, but Eugene Onegin could easily have been. I avoided it for a few months, leaving it at the bottom of the pile, afraid of poetry in transl... See more
