I was on the sea that day. And I don’t rule out that it could be me on the sea again tomorrow. There will be another time, another boat. There will be more hands, more bodies thrashing, more voices begging. Every time I am on the sea now I’m searching for them, scouring, breathless. The […]

As usual, the unusual stretch of radio silence here means that I have been writing: the good news is a proposal I sent in some months ago was unexpectedly accepted last week, but the challenge was they wanted it by today and I hadn’t really thought about it once the initial proposal had gone unanswered […]

In his introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Forsyte Saga, Geoffrey Harvey explains that we owe the saga in its completed form to Galsworthy’s goddaughter, Dorothy Ivens. The Man of Property had been published in 1906 but Galsworthy’s attention had moved on. Then in 1918, he published Indian Summer of a Forsyte as part of […]

Nothing in this world is more sure to upset a Forsyte than the discovery that something on which he has stipulated to spend a certain sum has cost more. And this is reasonable, for upon the accuracy of his estimates the whole policy of his life is ordered. If he cannot rely on the definite […]

“She’s not all right,” said the grave-digger. “She is clearly not all right. But then I don’t know who is. Our Het’s not. They never had any fun, any of these girls. Never, since the war, and they were only kids before it started. They don’t know where they are.” Jane Gardam’s The Flight of the […]

I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much […]