GEOFF CHANDLER muses on the repeated references to – and abuses of – Chess in newspapers, books and films. …

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Review by Michael Lister of William Empson, Volume I: Among the Mandarins by John Haffenden. …

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A review by Michael Lister of Afterwords: Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf, edited by Sybil Oldfield. …

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Review by Michael Lister of The Power of Delight: a lifetime in literature – essays: 1962–2002 by John Bayley. …

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Review of The Sinners of Cramond: The Struggle to Impose Godly Behaviour on a Scottish Community, 1651-1851 by Alison Hanham. …

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A lyrical story about a young girl’s first visit to the theatre, to see The Winter’s Tale. New fiction from ELIZABETH BURNS. …

More…Theatre Companions

Michael Lister reviews Pleasure and Change, the Aesthetics of Canon by Frank Kermode and edited by Robert Alter, with Geoffrey Hartman, John Guillroy and Carey Perloff. …

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Reviews by Michael Lister of Dilys Rose’s Lure, Edinburgh Review 114 and William Dunbar, ‘the Nobill Poyet’: Essays in honour of Priscilla Bawcutt, edited by Sally Mapstone. …

More…The Lure of Willie Dunbar

Reviews by Kate Blackadder of The Last Book You Read and Other Stories by Ewan Morrison and Furthermore by Susie Maguire. …

More…Small Wonder

Sid, the big black cat rules the roost in this short story by new writer GAVIN PIXTON. I don’t mind wet days. I’ve never minded them. Waking up and it’s pissing down, well big deal. All this crap about ‘Oh, no! It’s raining! My entire day is ruined! Oh God this bloody country WHAT a climate…’ on and fucking on. You’d think it was the end of the world for some people. A few wet days and they’re putting down

More…Cats Have Staff

Jennie Renton chats with MARIA HYLAND about her first novel, How the Light Gets In. …

More…Slipping Through the Cracks

Selim Aga a Sudanese boy aged about seven was abducted, enslaved and eventually bought in Alexandria and taken to Aberdeenshire in Scotland in 1848. JAMES MCCARTHY has researched this forgotten life. …

More…Selim Aga.Writing a Mystery Story

Jennie Renton and Benjamin Morris interview STEPHEN PRICKETT, the Director of the Armstrong Browning Library, which boasts the world’s largest Browning collection and has an important collection of works by 19th-century women poets. …

More…Browning Around

Nationalism could be a four-letter word, according to MARTIN BELK. Why else would an intelligent populace tolerate, nay support, an oil war and a redneck president, than because they have been whipped into an unthinking patriotic fervour by the powers that be? …

More…King George, Queen Blair & New York Whores

Alec Finlay examines the Glasgow artists who have used the book as a medium for presenting their work. …

More…Artist Books