And I've Been Wearing Specs Since I

Maybe Half A Dozen Think They Are A Community, But, In General Terms, I Think English Writers Tend To Face Outwards, Away From Each Other, And Write In Their Own Patch, As It Were.

As Soon As Oliver Twist Is Serialized, People Who Would Never Dream Of Reading [charles] Dickens, If They Hadn't Seen Him On Their Box, Buy The Paperback.

I Think There Might Even Come A Time When I Would Read Virgil Again. Ovid's Metamorphoses, Perhaps, Not Because The Music Goes Round And Round And Never Comes Out, But Because It's An Extraordinary Picture Of Ceaseless Change That Never Comes To An End.

The Novel Is Very Much Alive, Indeed. In Toronto At The Sixth Annual International Festival Of Authors (october 1985) I Listened To Novelists By The Dozen.

Then You Have People Coming Up Like Malcolm Bradbury, A Relatively Young Writer Who Deals With The Academic Scene And Deals With It, I Think, Brilliantly.