Paul Reid has done it! He has produced a worthy successor and final volume to the series started by William Manchester. It has been a long wait, but readers will not be disappointed by the result. Manchester published the first volume in 1983 and the second volume five years later. After completing research for the third book and starting in on the text, his health failed. Before he died, Manchester asked Reid to finish the project.
This volume begins just after Churchill took over as Prime Minister in the spring of 1940. At 1053 pages of closely printed text, it takes some time to read, but not one minute is wasted. The style closely follows the tone set by Manchester, and… Read more
Philip Larkin was a very good poet indeed. Alas, his complete body of work has now been embalmed in this massive tombstone of a book.
Larkin's poetry makes up the first 329 pages. There follows 400 PAGES of editorial commentary, which should never be read by anyone in their right minds least of all lovers of poetry.
Obviously this "scholarly" work is intended for the shelves of university libraries where it can be duly ignored. Faber's edition of the collected poems of Auden does without the academic trappings. Why was it necessary to burden Larkin with all this analysis by exhaustion? Certainly it does not make for an easily-held book let alone an inviting… Read more
Dr. Philip Murray has a fever: book fever to be precise. In this case the only prescription is confession. Murray, a retired Irish GP, has spent his life reading and collecting books. He has formed wonderful friendships with many authors whom he admires including Seamus Heaney as well as the booksellers with whom he deals. In this wonderful little volume of his own, he shares his passion.
A sure sign of Bibliomania is the enjoyment of reading about the habits of fellow sufferers. You will enjoy these true-life stories about trawling through used-book stores around the world, serindipitous discoveries and tracking down that particularly hard-to-get author's signature on a… Read more
