Tom Roper's Weblog

…an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge…” R.B. Sheridan The Rivals, 1775

Category: Literature

  • In which our hero borrows an e-book from the public library

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    Tom Roper
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    I wish I could remember the first book I borrowed from Cambridge Children’s Library, then at the rear of the Guildhall, opposite the Corn Exchange. I must have been four or five. I can remember the books I borrowed most frequently until I asked to be allowed to move on to the adult libray at…

  • Poems from the Crypt

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    Tom Roper
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    An evening of poetry at the Crypt Gallery on Wednesday 12 September, at 7:30 pm will take place as part of Seaford Live! 2012. Readers include: Peter Martin, reading from his collection, Ghost Music, poetry informed by the history of Seaford and the Cuckmere Valley Rachel Playforth, contributor to the Frogmore Papers. Rachel blogs at the spledidly named Toast…

  • George Meredith on Seaford

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    Tom Roper
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    ‘…an ill-conditioned sort of place with a struggling row of villas facing a muddy beach.’ ‘…the DULNESS is something frightful, and hangs on my neck like Sinbad’s Old Man of the Sea’

  • Craig Raine and the Dewey Decimal classification

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    Tom Roper
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    I am reading Craig Raine's Heartbreak at the moment, and enjoying it very much. It is very much a poet's novel, but none the worse for that. However, I paused, shocked, when I reached page 30 of the hardback edition, in the second story of the novel, that of Gallagher, a poet and Frazer, a…

  • Howard Jacobson wins Man Booker

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    Tom Roper
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    As everyone now knows, Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker with The Finkler Question. It was richly deserved and of the three of the six of the short-list I read, by far the greatest novel. The only pity is that the BBC coverage was such a shambles. They continued to interview Michael Portillo while Andrew…

  • Dryden

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    Tom Roper
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    Michael Gove is odious and his plans for education nothing short of disastrous. I never trusted the man ever since his too frequent appearances on Newsnight Review, when he would be beastly to the other panellists and rude to the presenter. That said, I think some of the commentators on his recent pronouncement at the…

  • Reading the Booker shortlist: a week to go

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    Tom Roper
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    New readers start here: I began an exercise on 7 September, the day the Man Booker shortlist was announced, to reserve them through the public libraries I use and read them all by the prize-giving, a week away today, on 12 October. The last time I reported progress, it looked as if I would not…

  • Man Booker: one down, five to go

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    Tom Roper
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    This is a small experiment to see if it is possible, using only the public libraries I belong to, to read the six books short-listed for the 2010 Man Booker prize before the winner is announced. On 7 September, when the shortlist came out, I reserved them all. About thirty minutes ago I finished Andrea…

  • The Man Booker shortlist

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    Tom Roper
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    Is the availability of the Man Booker Shortlist a measure of public library performance? The shortlist is: Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America Faber and Faber Emma Donoghue Room Picador Damon Galgut In a Strange Room Atlantic Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question Bloomsbury Andrea Levy The Long Song Headline Tom McCarthy C Jonathan Cape…

  • The Copious Text

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    Tom Roper
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    The copiousness of the Copious Text symposium last month has defeated me. It’s taken me so long to take my fifteen pages of notes and turn them into something readable partly because the papers presented there were so rich, and partly because I am not up to date, if I ever was, in early modern…

  • Poetry London

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    Tom Roper
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    I rarely sing the praises of iPhone apps, but City Poems is well worth the money will cost you in the apps store. Compiled by Victor Keegan, it mashes-up a map of London with poems about different parts of the city. There is nothing for Wandsworth, nor for much of the suburbs, but very rich…

  • Google and China

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    Tom Roper
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    I was amused the other night to watch a Newsnight reporter try to demonstrate the iniquity of the Chinese government by trying to access Facebook,  YouTube and Twitter from an internet cafe in the Peoples' Republic and failing.  He could have carried out the same exercise in many of this country's further education colleges, with…

  • Bloomsday

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    Tom Roper
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    Today is Bloomsday. As it’s also exam time please answer the question below. Is Bloomsday: a) A shameless attempt by Dubliners who have never read a word of Joyce to part tourists with literary pretensions from their money b) A pseudo-intellectual excuse for drunkenness and bad behaviour c) Something that was once original and amusing,…

  • ‘Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!’

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    Tom Roper
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    Sixty-eight years ago tomorrow, almost a human life-span, Virgina Woolf drowned herself in the Ouse. Every morning the train takes me along the Ouse valley, with Rodmell, where she and Leonard lived, on the far side. I often wonder where she entered the water. I have never swum in this section of the river. The…

  • Spring is sprung….

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    Tom Roper
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    …and all of a sudden this week's  calendar is full of events I would love to go to but have no time (or in the case of Cheltenham, money):A few this week are:Monday: Slavoj Žižek at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (which seems to have vanished from the South Bank website)Tuesday:  John Boardman at Kings College…

  • Edward Upward 1903-2009

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    Tom Roper
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    I saw the Guardian’s obituary of Edward Upward this afternoon, written by Alan Walker, who complied the definitive bibliography of Upward’s work. He died on Friday, aged 105. I first discovered his early work, Journey to the Border and the short stories of the 1930s, then the great anti-revisionist trilogy, The Spiral Ascent, which, I…

  • LRB: Patrick Hamilton’s drinking and Athenian democracy

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    Tom Roper
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    The paper version has yet to arrive, but the London Review of Books Newsletter alerts me to two articles I must read in the new issue:Christopher Tayler on Patrick Hamilton's DrinkingDavid Runciman on Athenian Democracy and Google The e-versions are for subscribers only, but readers who want to follow this up could either buy a…

  • Writers’ rooms

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    Tom Roper
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    Though I’ve had my own study, for the first time since school-days, for nearly three months now, the Guardian have yet to send a photographer to capture it for their writers’ rooms series which appears in the Review on Saturdays. They prefer to give space to less significant  talents. No matter, because now we have blogs…

  • CILIP speaks out on Hackney’s ban

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    Tom Roper
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    More on l’affaire Sinclair: there’s a well-argued letter from Caroline Moss-Gibbons in today’s Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/oct/27/olympics-2012-iain-sinclair censorship, hackney

  • Hackney bans Iain Sinclair’s book launch

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    Tom Roper
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    On the Today programme this morning, Iain Sinclair, the author, psychogeographer and bookseller, was interviewed. His new book Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report was to have been launched at an event at Stoke Newington Library, by invitation of the library. Hackney Council has now banned the event. The book, as Sinclair points out…

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