Letters
Lord Byron had many faults, but writing dull letters wasn’t one of them
Andrew Stauffer traces the poet’s tumultuous life through some of the most remarkable missives in the English language
Music was always Anthony Burgess’s first love
A gifted pianist and composer, Burgess combined his talents in a superb series of music reviews, published for the first time in a complete collection
An insider’s account of the CCP’s stranglehold on China
A high-ranking intelligence officer leaves a cache of letters revealing his increasing disenchantment with the party after being purged numerous times
Seamus Heaney’s letters confirm that he really was as nice as he seemed
Seamus Heaney’s letters are full of energy and joie de vivre, but a darker note persists as the pressure of celebrity grows, says Roy Foster
The making of a poet: Wilfred Owen’s ‘autobiography’ in letters
How, between 1911 and 1917, Owen became the dazzling poet we know and love is the story told in Jane Potter’s new edition of his selected letters
Frederic Raphael settles old scores with a vengeance
The nonagenarian’s critical faculties are as sharp as ever in these imaginary letters addressed to Kingsley Amis, Jonathan Miller, Doris Lessing and many others
Who needed who most? The complex bond between Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby
Claudia FitzHerbert explores the complex bond between two remarkable writers in the interwar years
A complex, driven, unhappy man: the truth about John le Carré
Adam Sisman on the private life of John le Carré, revealed in letters and a kiss-and-tell
The ‘delishious’ letters of Lucian Freud
Love him or loathe him, Lucian Freud was a maverick genius whose life from the off was as singular as…
As normal as blueberry pie: Oscar Hammerstein II, through his letters
Tolstoy or Dostoevsky? Picasso or Matisse? Lennon or McCartney? Impossible to call? No such quandary with Rodgers and Hart and…
What I’ve learnt from editing a newspaper letters page
The joys of editing a newspaper letters page
The sad, extraordinary life of Basil Bunting
Funny old life, eh? Small world, etc. In one of those curious, Alan Bennett-y, believe-it-or-not-but-I-once-delivered-meat-to-the mother-in-law-of-T.S.-Eliot-type coincidences, it turns out…
You’d never guess from her art how passionate Gwen John was
‘Dearest Gwen,’ writes Celia Paul, born 1959, to Gwen John, died 1939, ‘I know this letter to you is an…
T.S. Eliot’s preoccupations in wartime Britain
In her essay ‘A House of One’s Own’, about Vanessa Bell, Janet Malcolm says memorably that Bloomsbury is a fiction,…
Sun, sex and acid: Thom Gunn in California
San Francisco is a fantastic place… it’s terribly sunny… I am having a splendid hedonistic time here… I find myself…
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…
A literary scoop: the passionate correspondence between R.L. Stevenson and J.M. Barrie
This book has appeared with no fuss or fanfare and yet by any account it is something of a scoop.…
A passionate wartime love story is rescued from oblivion
Once in a while, just at the right moment, a truly gorgeous real-life love story appears out of the blue,…
The marvel of Mozart’s letters
It’s 1771, you’re in Milan, and your 14-year-old genius son has just premièred his new opera. How do you reward…
Love and letters in a Bloomsbury triangle
Dora Carrington (1893–1932) was at the heart of the Bloomsbury story. As an art student, she encountered the love of…
Mary Wesley’s passionate lifelong love affair
The novelist Mary Wesley never forgot the night of 26 October 1944. She was then 32, locked in a loveless…
Charities are the last bastion of corporate greed
Charities’ fundraising practices are out of control
Nabokov’s love letters are some of the most rapturous ever written
Vladimir Nabokov was happily married for over 50 years and rarely apart from his wife. More’s the pity, discovers Philip Hensher
'God has given me a new Turkish colleague called Mustapha Kunt...'
Under normal circumstances, Simon Garfield’s chatty and informative excursion into the history of letter-writing would be a book to recommend.…
The wonderful, vanishing world of the handwritten letter
Peter Oborne 4 July 2015 9:00 am
In praise of the old-fashioned letter-writer