Daily Mail, 3rd July 2014 The Lady, 4th July 2014 Literary Review, 4th July 2014 Lovereading Blog, 5th July, 2014 The Observer, 13th July, 2014 Empty Mirror Books, 14th July, 2014 Financial Times, 18th July, 2014 GQ, 21 July, 2014 We Love This Book, 22nd July, 2014 Country Life, 23rd July 2014 The Telegraph, 23rd … Read More
In Love and War
A tale of love, heroism and resistance set against the stunning backdrop of 1930s Florence, In Love and War weaves fact and fiction to create a sweeping portrait of a city under siege. The novel is told through the eyes, letters and journals of Esmond Lowndes, who comes to Italy a lonely young man in … Read More
Stoner by John Williams
I’m occasionally accused of being too enthusiastic about books on Twitter. Firstly, I think it’s an peppy medium, feeding upon shared pleasures, the web that the love of a good book can knit between people. Secondly, I’ve been on a good run recently. 2013 was the year I discovered Shirley Hazzard, whose novels (particularly The … Read More
Where Novels Are, There Love Is
This is the speech I gave at Tolstoy’s home, Yasnaya Polyana, for the 2012 International Tolstoy Festival. In her address to the Edinburgh International Writers’ Conference in August 2012, Adhaf Soueif challenged the idea that novels can, or ought to, be political.”Is a novelist a literary activist?” she asked. “Should the novel be political? I … Read More
St John’s College Sermon
On Remembrance Sunday, 2012, I preached my first ever sermon on a wintry Oxford evening at St. John’s College Chapel. Here it is. “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid… The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall … Read More