It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me.

Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audience, but the literary journalist has to p…

Yes, well I had all my serious illnesses in late middle age. And now I'm just stuck, I'm afraid.

Wilson was not, in the academic sense, a scholar or historian. He was an enormous reader, one of those readers who are perpetually on the scent from book to bo…

A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that…

What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childli…

To speak from a particular place and time is not provincialism but part of a writer's identity.