I saw 'Waiting for Godot' in London at the weekend. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen made it the hottest ticket in town. This was a privilege to see.
'The Horse Painters' is now on Amazon. I have had some kind reviews for which I send the writers greetings
The 2009 Orange Prize has been won by Marilynne Robinson for Home. There have been murmurings that a prize for female writers is an anachronism. After all they frequently beat men in the other major competitions. My suggestion is to combine it with the
If you get the opportunity - Charity Shop, Car Boot Sale or ignore my usual advice and buy in it Border's - do read Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning. I love this book, funny, thought provoking, well written. What more can you want for a sunny afternoon,
The Horsepainters cover is finished and looks very good. We overcome the Ice Age copyright problem, so could reproduce a 35,000 year old painting without getting into trouble with the Trustees of the estate of the artist. I have been trying to get authors
The Horse Painters is well on its way. I have proof read it twice then proofread it again and signed it off. That is a total of 120,000 words plus an awful lot of commas carefully examined. I'll still probably find a typo in the book, but a chap
I recommend Being Geniuses Together by Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle. Despite its uninspired title it is a good read. It is about the amazing period in the 1920s when most of the great writers of the century were in Paris. Joyce, Stein, Pound, Hemingway,
We have a new Poet Laureate. That will be good news for Andrew Motion the previous one, who retires traumatised, having nearly given up poetry along the way. So how is a Poet Laureate chosen? The Prime Minister nominates successors and the Queen has to
The Cambridge Wordfest came up trumps with Michael Morpugos's talk, given to a sell out audience of children. He is a great showman, as well as a great writer, and had the children spellbound. For me he is the best young person's writer
I don't like to say, 'I told you so,' (not very much anyway), but the long awaited Cambridge City Library will not be up and running in May. The Council has sacked the builder. The library was due for completion in March 2008, most recently May 2009. The
It is not unusual for the Man Booker Prize panel to take leave of its senses, but this is the most bizarre yet. The judges from the 2008 Man Booker Prize are to plant 13 native oak trees to replace the paper used in the 112 novels they read to come to
Rhetoric is being lost these days in public life. It is of course still alive and well in marital disputes, but we will not pursue that line of enquiry. In public Obama is excellent and there are few to rival him. We do have, on this side
I was reading about a few verses of St Mathew's Gospel on a fragment of papyrus in the library of Magdalen College,Oxford. Some scholars say it is the earliest extant Gospel text, dating from the mid first century AD. Indeed, maybe it was written in the
We have a new painting of Shakespeare. The only one painted in his lifetime. This has been owned by an Irish family ever since they inherited it from the Earl of Southampton who was a friend of Shakespeare's. It portrays a young man, richly dressed, who
Amazingly the Cambridge City Council is giving an opening date for the Central Library (no longer, imaginatively, to be called Library Central). It is May of this year, having slipped from February after slipping a year already. I would order the champagne
The Byzantine Exhibition at the Royal Academy was excellent. The craftsmanship in gold, silver and precious stones was of the highest quality. There were books, interesting for their antiquity, although the artistic standard was not as high as the artifacts.