Oxford… a residence for fantasy, as it has been since – and possibly before – Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson, which appeared in 1911. As one sees here, many surprising connections could be made, some beyond the university. Hilary Rubinstein attended Merton College. Having graduated, he went to work for his uncle, Victor Gollancz, the publisher. […]

Among those whom Kingsley admired and always spoke of respectfully was C.S.Lewis, who had been his tutor. This, despite the fact that Kingsley was anti-Church while Lewis was profoundly Christian. Lewis was the embodiment of friendship, never thrusting himself or his point of view on anyone. One of my first meetings with him was in […]

Count Leo Tolstoi’s final novel was published in installments throughout 1898, in a magazine. In fact, in several magazines. Tolstoi was seventy years old in an exhausting year. Tolstoi had to check cuts made in his work by censors, week after week. Censors were not the writer’s only problem; closer to home, Sonya, Tolstoi’e wife, […]

Bruce was a close friend of Kingsley Amis. Both had been at St John’s, together with Philip Larkin.Bruce was regarded as wealthy. He was already composing musical scores for British movies. Kingsley would say jokingly that while he and Larkin had to drink beer in The Bird and Baby (aka The Eagle and Child, a […]

Kingsley, born in 1922, came up to St. John’s College, where he met Philip Larkin. They remained friends for life. Kingsley was good at friendship. I am convinced that it was Kingsley who got me a place in ‘Who’s Who’, but he was not the sort of bloke who would sneak round later, saying, ‘Look, […]

Another friend, a writer, this one strange and, like Kafka, an exile from the ordinary world in which most of us are destined to live: Anna Kavan. Anna welcomed me to her home, the home of her own design. We met towards the end of her life. I knew nothing of her heroin habit, a […]

SOLZHENITSYN died in August 2008, at the age of 89. He is never forgotten, or so we hope and expect. With his courage, his humour, and his determination go his experience of suffering and survival in Stalin’s labour camps. Those terrible camps form the centrepiece of Solzhenitsyn’s greatest book, THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO. When the great […]

Shakespeare is different. Different from all others, I mean. More – well, among other things, more personal. Entirely of my own volition, I came to live in Oxford. I had left the barbaric foreign islands occupied by the British Army and sought culture here. I found much Shakespeare in Oxford, and now we, or some […]

Mary Shelley’s grim fantasy, “Frankenstein Or The Modern Promethius” – to quote its full title – was published on New Year’s Day 1818. It has rarely been out of print in one form or another since.This first edition carried a preface by the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. In its early days, there were those who […]