The making of a poet
Charles Causley was a poet’s poet. Both Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin considered him the finest candidate for the laureateship,…
Shades of the prison house
For Jean-Paul Dubois, as for Emily Dickinson, ‘March is the month of expectation’. A prolific writer, he limits his literary…
Losing direction
James Ivory and Ismail Merchant formed the most successful cinematic partnership since Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger. Between the founding…
The grandest dame
Eileen Atkins belongs to a singular generation of British actresses, among them Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Sian Phillips and Vanessa…
Mann’s secret desires
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
It is a truism that a book needs readers in order to have a meaningful existence. Hugo Hamilton’s The Pages…
Gossip abounds
In December 1979, the 28-year-old Hugo Vickers, dining with a friend, declared: ‘I see little point to life these days.’…
Women of the gospels
The gnostic Gospel of Mary has long been the subject of controversy, even as to which of the several Marys…
