Martin Amis
Zadie Smith muses on the artist-muse relationship
In an outstanding essay on Lucian Freud and Celia Paul, inspirations for each other, Smith even admits to having offered to model for Freud herself as a teenager
To Salman Rushdie, a dream before his attempted murder ‘felt like a premonition’
Though premonitions are not things he believes in, Rushdie notes the many spooky coincidences surrounding the attack – which he describes in gripping, terrifying detail
Shelf conscious: I had no idea I was such a show-off
I’ve just had new bookshelves put up in the hall, a whole wall-full of them, and for the first time…
A biographer’s tale: beware of meeting your literary heroes
Germaine Greer described biographers as ‘vultures’. I prefer to think of myself as a version of Philip Marlowe or Sam…
More books of the year
Daniel Swift I spent too much of this (and last) year reading anaemic updatings of Shakespeare plays: pale novels which…
The hatred that Amis and Corbyn share
Everyone loves an underdog. It doesn’t matter how incompetent they might be — indeed, incompetence works in their favour. You…
Pessimism keeps breaking in
State-of-criticism overviews and assessments almost always strike a bleak note —the critical mind naturally angles towards pessimism — so it…
