“It’s not a love affair or a marriage; it’s a job," says the biographer Hermione Lee, who is taking on her first living subject... more »
“Dickens is infinitely greater than his critics,” John Carey wrote. But not necessarily wiser... more »
Political poems were “excruciating”; the “so-called arts of the left” were insincere — for George and Mary Oppen, politics and the arts did not mix ... more »