Tag Archives: T.S. Eliot

From the diary of a writer-publisher: 21

7 January Almost themed, one could say, in Calderonia, Cambridge academic Ruth Scurr has written a meaty review in today’s Spectator of Claire Harman’s experiment in biography All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything. Anyone who writes … Continue reading

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Very Old Cambridge Tales: 1

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF GRANTA POEM: Horror O The Studio, Fowlmere. 4.11.67                                                      … Continue reading

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Bruegel, reality and truth

We all, I imagine, have photographs of terrible events (World War 1, say, the Holocaust, or Hiroshima) indelibly seared on our brains. Where Ukraine 2022 is concerned, the above is the one I shall never forget. The face is straight … Continue reading

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Guest post by Damian Grant: ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’

This nineteenth-century engraving of Florizel and Perdita does indeed make them look — to use Lady Chatterley/Connie’s dismissive phrase about the Elizabethans — somewhat ‘upholstered’. In all the excitement — which has never quite subsided — about the sexual explicitness … Continue reading

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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 11

1 August It is now seven weeks since I submitted to The Spectator my 1500-word piece Save it for the (American) nation! How British archives fail us, so I fear they have missed an historic opportunity… It’s been delightful corresponding … Continue reading

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‘All shall be well’ really?

The text of my biography is now as ready, I think, as it’s ever going to be, my approaches to publishers are roughly on course, but I am far behind with my Permissions, and that means with writing my voluminous … Continue reading

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The biographer blurts

Ah dear, it’s time to come clean. The ‘disaster’ has happened: this blog is now a fortnight ahead of the writing of my biography itself. I finished Chapter 14 of the biography with George going over the top on 4 … Continue reading

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A biographer in-spires

I have just read a long article by Ruth Scurr, ‘Lives, some briefer than others’, in last Saturday’s Guardian Review (28 February), which I thoroughly recommend to followers if they can get it, along with a piece by Stuart Kelly, ‘Enter … Continue reading

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The dear departed

After writing the last sentence of George’s life in its strict earthly sense (I have two short chapters about his and Kittie’s afterlife still to write), I left the manuscript chapter for a day before coming back to revise it, as … Continue reading

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A biographer’s long breath

Back in September, on 27th to be precise, a former professor of American and English literature at Leeds University, Park Honan, died at the age of eighty-six. Since another former professor of English literature recently expressed to me the view … Continue reading

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