Anthony Burgess, Collected Poems, edited by Jonathan Mann
Reviewed by Rob Spence Inevitably, when Anthony Burgess is mentioned, people who have heard of him will associate him with the notorious novel and then film A Clockwork Orange. Often…
Reviewed by Rob Spence Inevitably, when Anthony Burgess is mentioned, people who have heard of him will associate him with the notorious novel and then film A Clockwork Orange. Often…
Reviewed by Rob Spence Lucy Newlyn is a intriguing literary figure. She had a career as an Oxford don, publishing well-regarded studies of Romantic poets as well as collections of…
Reviewed by Rob Spence Kenneth Price is the co-director of the Walt Whitman Archive, and one of the leading experts on the poet, having published widely on his work. This…
Review by Rob Spence Modernism has always resisted precise definition, and in recent years it has been normal in literary-critical circles to use the plural form in order to emphasise…
Reviewed by Rob Spence Blanche Girouard, born in 1898, was a prominent figure in the Anglo-Irish aristocracy of the early twentieth century. Her father was the Marquess of Waterford, and…
Reviewed by Rob Spence I recently watched the Ethiopia episode of Afua Hirsch’s excellent series African Renaissance, in which I was startled to see an interview with Sylvia Pankhurst’s daughter-in-law,…
Members of the Shiny reviewing team share previously published books from their shelves that they’re reading now… Review by Rob Spence Readers of Shiny New Books will be aware of…
Paperback review by Rob Spence It comes as a bit of a shock to realise that Ian Rankin has now published well over thirty novels since his début in 1986,…
Review by Rob Spence Last year, Weidenfeld and Nicholson reissued Edna O’Brien’s 1999 biography of Joyce, an entertainingly idiosyncratic volume, which is reviewed here. Now, the same publishers have revived…
Review by Rob Spence When we think of First World War poets, it’s safe to say that Hugh Lofting will not be the first name that springs to mind. The creator…
Review by Rob Spence In 1935, the doyen of art critics, Ernst Gombrich, was a young, unemployed former student with a PhD in art history. He was commissioned by an…
Review by Rob Spence Edna O’Brien’s position as one of the most significant modern Irish writers is undisputed, and here, in this reissue of her 1999 short biography, she tackles…
Review by Rob Spence In one important respect, this book was outdated at the moment it was published: its subject, Clive James, having endured a terminal illness for ten years,…
Review by Rob Spence When the newly-elected Brexit party MEPs took their place at the European Parliament in June, they used the opening ceremony as a stunt, turning their backs…
Review by Rob Spence Malaysian novelist Tash Aw’s fourth novel marks a departure in style for him. Rather than the broad canvas he presented in earlier works such as The…
Edited by Kenneth Haynes Reviewed by Rob Spence When Geoffrey Hill died in 2016, his monumental Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952 -2012 was still fresh, its astonishing range and scope providing ample testimony…
Review by Rob Spence It probably doesn’t occur to many people as they struggle to fix bolt B to batten F of the Ikea flatpack wardrobe that the exercise in…
Review by Rob Spence English-language fiction set in colonial Malaya tended in the past to focus on the lives of the Empire types who ruled the roost back then: Somerset…
Review by Rob Spence East Anglia has quite a lot of previous when it comes to crime fiction: Colin Watson’s chronicles of Flaxborough, James Runcie’s Grantchester mysteries, and Nicola Upson’s…
Review by Rob Spence We live in an age of fake news, propagated by politicians, celebrities and media organisations. Perhaps we always have – from the tricks of Elizabethan propaganda…
Review by Rob Spence This remarkably compelling memoir is, surprisingly, the first prose publication of George Szirtes, one of our most distinguished poets. At its centre is the disquieting life…
Review by Rob Spence Tóibín’s title, of course, comes from Lady Caroline Lamb’s snap judgement of Byron; it’s not clear whether the author here intends the epithets to be applied…
Edited by Robert Faggen & Alexandra Pleshoyano Review by Rob Spence For a while in the mid sixties to the early seventies, the singer-songwriter reigned supreme in popular music. Dylan,…
Translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen Review by Rob Spence The strap line chosen by the publishers for the cover of this massive novel is instructive: “None of us…