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I have loved Adrian Henri ever since I read him in my schooldays in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in the Penguin Modern Poets’ Mersey Sound. The slim red paperback with photo negatives of mop-headed young men on the cover, which included poems by him and two other Liverpool poets Brian Patten and Roger McGough, has sold
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John Steinbeck died on this day in 1968 at the age of 66, six years after he won the Nobel Prize, which even he himself didn’t expect. Critical scorn When asked by a reporter whether he believed he deserved the prize, he responded, “Frankly, no,” says Robert Gottlieb. In a New York Review of Books
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Real Time by Amit Chaudhuri What a surprise! Dakkhinee, the bookstall I used to visit in my younger days in Calcutta (Kolkata), is mentioned by the Indian writer, Amit Chaudhuri, in his Real Time collection of short stories. “The Dakkhinee Bookshop, at the turning crossing of Lansdowne Road and Rashbehari Avenue – it was really
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Ghost Train To The Eastern Star by Paul Theroux Paul Theroux has written an immensely readable sequel to The Great Railway Bazaar, repeating that railway journey from Europe to Asia and back which earned him fame and fortune more than 30 years ago. It is bursting with people and places, rich in indelible portraits. I
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On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. A relationship formalised when her stroking his penis elicits a marriage proposal from him ends on wedding night when her grasping his penis again makes him come all over her, sending her fleeing in revulsion first to the bathroom and then out of the hotel. She is frigid, Edward
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Poems can be sexy and fun. Like this poem by James Fenton. I first read James Fenton way back when in the New Statesman. But let’s get on with the poem. In Paris With You By James Fenton Don’t talk to me of love. I’ve had an earful And I get tearful when I’ve drowned
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The English Teacher by RK Narayan reminds me of Erich Segal’s Love Story and the Bobby Goldsboro classic, Honey. One may even be reminded of David Copperfield and Dora. Narayan has been compared to Charles Dickens. But the relationship between the couple at the centre of this story is more profoundly moving. I have not
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Tales from Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry Tales from Firozsha Baag is a charming collection of short stories – and unusual too. Published in 1987, Rohinton Mistry’s first book describes an India I remember all too well. An India where it took years to get a telephone, months to get a refrigerator. Now even slum
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Even those who have not read Gabriel Garcia Marquez will enjoy listening to The Strand, the BBC World Service arts and culture programme, where Gerald Martin tells Harriett Gilbert how he wrote Marquez’s biography. The 1982 Nobel Prize winner for literature emerges as such a fascinating figure that one immediately wants to read him. The
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