Travellers & Writers
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Robert Irwin for many years co-hosted a gathering of creative writers in the upstairs room of the Blue Post pub in Fitzrovia, so that we could steal each other’s plots and swap gossip about publishers and agents.
He remembered with documentary accuracy what an indifferent, if not bored and shirty, student he had been as both boy and young man, only interested in music, films, cigarettes, booze and girls.
While Emma ends up defending a tribal slaughter perpetuated by her husband, her professionally minded ex-colleagues (there to feed the starving) go on strike when their regular supply of air-freighted meals is suspended.
He was also a crack shot and a determined and successful lover of women – to the extent that at one period of his life, he was running three separate ‘establishments’.
Michael was always a brilliant communicator, which he could do perched at a bar, in a university lecture hall, slumped across a sofa after midnight or at an international literary festival.
We love stumbling across wisdom in all the different ages of humankind, and try to avoid falling into the trap that our contemporary culture is any significant way, wiser than that of our ancestors.
He was not interested in contracts, systems or office hours, but accepted the dictats of a deadline and a mission with absolute conviction.
Jan had been thrown out of the Club after changing her sex. “Nothing to do with wearing skirts” and then her noble head rolled back and roared with laughter at the memory of it.
Bruce had enthusiasm, he had stamina, he had knowledge, he had an ear and a delight for music, language and poetry. What he did not have was any money or any interest in making it, let alone submitting to the slavery of a salary.
We would all agree, that one of the most acute pleasures of the traveller with time on his hands is reading the right book in the right place – discovering stories in the landscape in which they were written
John was expelled from his Brooklyn high school (scoring 0% in all subjects except for the humanities in which he scored 100%) and seemed destined to become cannon fodder.
my most enduring memory of her is right at the end of her life, supremely elegant in tight trousers and surrounded by male admirers, horses, books, projects and her two beloved children. She was back on some sort of vegan-like diet, specified by a guru, but otherwise on conversational full throttle
We look for books that have been written with inner conviction and truth about the world. We want them to observant of others, capable of summing up a spirit of place and catching the moment on the wing.
What undoubtedly gave him the greatest pleasure however was being allowed to talk to Gandhi on a long, dawn walk through the deserted streets of London.
… one of the most searing criticisms of the bleak reality of French colonialism to have ever been published.
… on his own initiative, Lewen had collected together a dossier on all the fresh-water wells in the deserts of Egypt. Discrete observation of these wells would enable the British to track any foreign intelligence service trying to operate within Egypt.
Bob always looked healthy and happy, like some vision of a well-fed monk from England’s golden past.
We look for books that have been written with inner conviction and truth about the world. We want them to observant of others, capable of summing up a spirit of place and catching the moment on the wing.
If you have ever wondered what James Bond, having settled down with Miss Moneypenny, might have been like as a father, then you need look no further.
Whatever the theologians might say about heaven being in a state of union with God, I knew that it consisted of an infinite library; and eternity was simply what enabled one to read uninterruptedly for ever