James Barlow: the revival starts here

Having successfully revived the novelist David Karp, Steerforth champions another undeservedly forgotten author... It isn't easy to find a more obscure novelist than David Karp, but I think I've succeeded. A  visit to Camilla's Bookshop in Eastbourne yielded this novel, published in 1961: Yes, that is Larry Olivier on the front cover ... Read More...

Beverley Nichols: Mostly whimsical

Some pretty twee writing on a wall prods Nige's memory of a once-famous author... Quotations have their uses. Without them, according to Wodehouse, any conversation between chaps would be nothing but an endless succession of 'What ho's. Oddly, these days, they are increasingly becoming an element of interior design, gracing the ... Read More...

Dabbler Diary – My Favourite Australian

My favourite Australian - the competition is not stiff - is Michael ‘Maxy’ Klinger. Michael Klinger is a softly-spoken, slender, crooked man with austerely cropped grey hair and the permanent wrinkled grin that pale-skinned Antipodeans have evolved to cope with the sun. He makes a living by carefully, repetitively striking ... Read More...

The Slang Guide to London – The Jago

Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London by venturing into an area just off Bethnal Green Road known as the "worst street in London"... So which was the worst street in London? Marked in the most stygian black (‘lowest class...occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals’) on Charles Booth’s ... Read More...

Phantom Libraries – Part 6: Babel

In the concluding episode of his series about Phantom Libraries and unwritten books, Jonathan Law comes at last to Borges, monkeys and Babel... In all this talk of lost and phantom libraries there is one giant figure we have yet to consider, although his presence may have been felt hovering in the wings: the great ... Read More...