Virginia Woolf
Jonathan Bate weaves a memoir around madness in English literature
There is a trend for books in which academics write personally about their engagement with literature. Examples include Lara Feigel’s…
Arnold Bennett’s success made him loathed by other writers
Virginia Woolf admitted to her journal: ‘I haven’t that reality gift.’ Her contemporary Arnold Bennett had it in spades. He…
Disappointingly conventional and linear: BBC radio's modernism season reviewed
This week marks the beginning of modernism season on BBC Radio 3 and 4, which means it’s time for some…
The novels that became instant classics
In the world of books, a modern classic is an altogether more slippery thing than a classic: it must walk…
How two literary magazines boosted morale during the Blitz
William Loxley’s lively account of ‘Bloomsbury, the Blitz and Horizon magazine’ begins with W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood emigrating to…
The stuff of everyday life: Real Estate, by Deborah Levy, reviewed
Real Estate is the third and concluding volume of Deborah Levy’s ground-breaking ‘Living Autobiography’. Fans of Levy’s alluring, highly allusive…
Seldom less than gripping: Banged Up podcast reviewed
Prison-based podcast Banged Up, now in its second series, is far more uplifting — and less soapy — than its…
Five bluestockings in one Bloomsbury square
The presiding genius of this original and erudite book is undoubtedly Virginia Woolf, whose essay ‘A Room of One’s Own’…
Tear-stained ramblings that remained unsent
The deserved success of Shaun Usher’s marvellous anthology Letters of Note has inspired several imitators, and Caroline Atkins’s sparkling collection…
Critical injuries: the perils of book reviews
A decade ago, a publisher produced a set of short biographies of Britain’s 20th-century prime ministers, which I reviewed unenthusiastically.…
Nothing’s coming up roses in the garden these days
Emotional geography is now a recognised academic subject. Is emotional botany heading the same way? This is a year for…
Romance and rejection
‘Outsider’ ought to be an important word. To attach it to someone, particularly a writer, is to suggest that their…
In Woolf’s clothing
Martin Amis once said that the writer’s life is half ambition and half anxiety. While one part of your brain…
William Shakespeare: all things to all men
The best new books celebrating Shakespeare’s centenary are full of enthusiasm and insight — but none plucks out the heart of his mystery, says Daniel Swift
More family history from Knole and Sissinghurst
In deciding to write a book about her forebears and herself, Juliet Nicolson follows in their footsteps. Given that her…
From Auden to Wilde: a roll call of gay talent
The Comintern was the name given to the international communist network in the Soviet era, advancing the cause wherever it…
T.S. Eliot’s crisis year: exhaustion, hair loss and a wrecked marriage
F.R. Leavis once denounced the Twickenham edition of Pope’s Dunciad for producing a meagre trickle of text through a desert…
So the Queen's a Satanist cannibal? I’d still swear allegiance
Roy was a superb mechanic, a methodical master of his trade. For an hour I respectfully watched him work to…
Hide and seek with T.S. Eliot
Not only is this the definitive edition of T.S. Eliot’s poems, it is also the best biography of the poet we have, says Daniel Swift
Autumn, season of conkers and new boots
Each year when I see the first conker of the autumn I think: fire up the ancestral ovens! This incendiary…
A.N. Wilson’s diary: VJ Day and the Virginia Woolf Burger Bar
Should we have celebrated VJ Day? Hearing the hieratic tones of the Emperor Hirohito on Radio 4 the other day,…
Rapture - and loathing: Woolf Works at the Royal Ballet reviewed
People have been saying that Wayne McGregor’s new Woolf Works has reinvented the three-act ballet, but not so. William Forsythe…
John Maynard Keynes: transforming global economy while reading Virginia Woolf
To the 21st-century right, especially in the United States, John Maynard Keynes has become a much-hated figure whose name is…
Vita in her ivory tower: a portrait of a lonely, lovelorn aristocrat who yearned to be mistress of her own ancestral home
Visitors to the National Trust’s Sissinghurst — the decayed Elizabethan castle transformed by Vita Sackville-West in the early 1930s —…
Behind (almost) every great writer is a great garden
It is a truism that writers of all kinds often find inspiration and solace in their gardens, as well as…
