Synopses & Reviews
From a great literary critic comes a book on writers and their relationship to the countryside, including discussion of Seamus Heaney, Ian McEwan, Anne Tyler, and more In this essay collection the founder of the London Review of Books turns his attention to appreciate certain writers of the English-speaking modern world. Most of them are inhabitants of the North Sea archipelago once known as Great Britain, who are here seen as tribally distinct, as Scottish, English, Irish, or Welsh, and as a single society. A new ruralism has come to notice, and the book is drawn to country lives as they have figured in the literature of the last century. An introductory essay is centred on the Anglo-Welsh borderlands. Journeys taken with Seamus Heaney and Andrew O'Hagan to this countryside, and others, are threaded throughout the book. The poets Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes are discussed, together with the fiction of Ian McEwan, the Canadian writer Alistair Macleod, the Irish writer John McGahern, and the Baltimorean Anne Tyler. Scotland is a preoccupation of the later pieces, including the letters of Henry Cockburn, a lifelong interest of the author, who is also interested here in foxes and their current metropolitan profile.
Synopsis
In his latest book of essays Karl Miller turns his attention to appreciate certain writers of the English-speaking modern world. A new ruralism has come to notice in this country, and the book is drawn to country lives as they have figured in the literature of the last century.
An introductory essay is centred on the Anglo-Welsh borderlands. Journeys taken with Seamus Heaney and Andrew O'Hagan to this countryside, and others, are threaded throughout the book. The poets Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes are discussed, together with the fiction of Ian McEwan, the Canadian writer Alistair Macleod, the Irish writer John McGahern and the Baltimorean Anne Tyler.
Scotland is a preoccupation of the later pieces, including the letters of Henry Cockburn, a lifelong interest of the author, who is also interested here in foxes and their current metropolitan profile.
Synopsis
In this last book of essays Karl Miller turns his attention to appreciate certain writers of the Englishspeaking modern world. Most of them are inhabitants of the North Sea archipelago once known as Great Britain, who are here seen as tribally distinct, as Scottish, English, Irish, or Welsh, and as a single society. The book is drawn to country lives as they have figured in the literature of the last century.
About the Author
Karl Miller is the former literary editor of the New Statesman and the Spectator. He was then the editor of the Listener, and went on to found the London Review of Books. He is the author of Conversations with Seamus Heaney. Seamus Heaney is a Nobel Prize-winning poet whose works include Beowulf: A New Verse Translation and Opened Ground. Andrew O'Hagan is a novelist whose works include Be Near Me and The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe. He has been published in the New York Times and the New Yorker.