Gardeners, writers and artists have always understood the value of the number three: less boringly symmetrical than two, more complex than one. Where would Flaubert, Chekhov or Constance Spry be without it? And scriptwriter Steven Moffat, whom I admire hugely, clearly loves it; he named one of his Doctor Who episodes ‘The Power of Three’ […]
Eating with a book is one of the great pleasures. Eating while talking about books is another, and second to that comes talking about books that have eating in them. I once gave a lecture at Newnham College, Cambridge about Virginia Woolf. Newnham was the venue for Woolf’s talks about women and fiction which formed the […]
It can be useful to sit in someone else’s chair every now and again, if only to scuttle back with relief to your own. I’ve been sitting in B. S. Johnson’s seat this week, imagining his frustration at having his experimental novels widely praised but rarely bought. Johnson’s finest work, The Unfortunates, published in […]
