Police perjury, political manipulation and judicial failings … Thomas Grant’s pungent, amusing study details the heroic achievements of a supreme criminal barristerThe doyen of the English criminal bar, Jeremy Hutchinson, turned 100 on 28 March. Still a spry and self-sufficient figure, his centenary has been marked by publication of a study of 14 eminent cases in which he was briefed for the defence. Space limitations have excluded several fascinating cases: Hutchinson defended the Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson, the corrupt Labour leader of Newcastle council, T Dan Smith, and won in the court of appeal on behalf of Commander Christopher Swabey, after a 16-year fight against conviction by a Royal Navy court martial for indecent assault (Swabey had supposedly put his hand on a sub-lieutenant’s knee).Hutchinson is a scion of the Bloomsbury set (his mother was a Strachey, who became a model for Virginia Woolf’s character Clarissa Dalloway as well as the lover of Clive Bell). He remembers both TS Eliot and John Maynard Keynes before they became the celebrity authors of The Waste Land and The Economic Consequences of the Peace. For much of the war he was a naval officer on ships commanded by Louis Mountbatten, and he was swept overboard when German dive-bombers sank the destroyer HMS Kelly. Mountbatten made the survivors sing “Roll out the Barrel” to lift their spirits. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2015-05-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
The prize-winning poet and novelist on writing and book binding, his wariness of new technology and why literature is the ultimate immersive experienceJO Morgan has published book-length poems on subjects as diverse as the 10th-century battle of Maldon and a future Martian returning to his... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-07-22 17:00:17 UTC ]
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Today, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land first appeared in print in The Criterion, a quarterly British literary magazine founded and edited by Eliot. The poem’s final form was heavily influenced by Ezra Pound, who made extensive cuts and revisions to Eliot’s manuscript. Eliot once said of his mentor... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-10-15 19:30:10 UTC ]
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De Montfort Literature will employ an algorithm ‘to identify career novelists’, and hopes to free its writers from second jobsEven the most revered authors held down day jobs, from TS Eliot’s time at Lloyd’s to Walt Whitman’s stint as a government clerk. Now a “successful hedge fund with a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-06-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Head of venerable press says his sector has important role in the defence of free speech and champions the revival of literary fiction and traditional booksFaber & Faber’s chief executive has called for publishers to oppose crackdowns on free speech and the rise of so-called fake news.... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-02-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Faber and Touchpress have launched a ‘groundbreaking’ new app, Arcadia, to explore the future of digital reading after ebooks. Bestselling novelist Iain Pears has conceived his new work, Arcadia, to be read as an app. The novel was written using specially-commissioned software and developed... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-08-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Police perjury, political manipulation and judicial failings … Thomas Grant’s pungent, amusing study details the heroic achievements of a supreme criminal barristerThe doyen of the English criminal bar, Jeremy Hutchinson, turned 100 on 28 March. Still a spry and self-sufficient figure, his... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-05-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Canongate will publish a new book from musician Nick Cave, including a limited edition priced at £750. The Sick Bag Song will be published by Canongate on 8th April and sold exclusively through the site thesickbagsong.com. Based around Cave's 2014 tour of the US, it was originally written on... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-03-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Homeless busker James Bowen was helped in his struggle against addiction by the companionship of a stray cat. Now his books charting their friendship have propelled him into an elite publishing clubSamuel Johnson used to buy oysters for his cat, Hodge; Charles Dickens was so distressed when his... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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