Literary fun and games
Academic jargon, back-scratching and literary scandals were all ripe for treatment in the long-running N.B. by J.C. column – now available in a glorious miscellany
Andrew Motion pays tribute to his poetic mentors
In a second memoir, Motion focuses on how he became a poet, and his search for father figures, including W.H. Auden and Philip Larkin
Shirley Hazzard – so in love with Italy she spoke in arias
Hazzard’s spiritual awakening on reading Leopardi’s poems and first seeing the Bay of Naples led to a lifelong passion for her adopted country
Suicide was always a spectre for John Berryman
‘A matter that hurts me is that I have made many hundreds of people laugh, in various cities, during the…
