The making of a poet: Mother’s Boy, by Patrick Gale, reviewed
Charles Causley was a poet’s poet. Both Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin considered him the finest candidate for the laureateship,…
Man of mystery: Not Everybody Lives the Same Way, by Jean-Paul Dubois, reviewed
For Jean-Paul Dubois, as for Emily Dickinson, ‘March is the month of expectation’. A prolific writer, he limits his literary…
A scrapbook of sketches: James Ivory’s memoir is slipshod and inconsequential
James Ivory and Ismail Merchant formed the most successful cinematic partnership since Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger. Between the founding…
From ‘little Cockney’ to playing Queen Mary: the remarkable career of Eileen Atkins
Eileen Atkins belongs to a singular generation of British actresses, among them Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Sian Phillips and Vanessa…
The secret life of Thomas Mann: The Magician, by Colm Tóibín, reviewed
In a letter to Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden, who had married Thomas Mann’s daughter Erika sight unseen in order to…
The book as narrator: The Pages, by Hugo Hamilton, reviewed
It is a truism that a book needs readers in order to have a meaningful existence. Hugo Hamilton’s The Pages…
Brightest of the Bright Young People: the rich, rackety life of Cecil Beaton
In December 1979, the 28-year-old Hugo Vickers, dining with a friend, declared: ‘I see little point to life these days.’…
Celebrating Jesus’s female followers: Names of the Women, by Jeet Thayil, reviewed
The gnostic Gospel of Mary has long been the subject of controversy, even as to which of the several Marys…
