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“... Hardly any good poems came out of the conflict in Vietnam and most of those were written by James Fenton, a poet alert to the eerie surrealism of war. What happens when the war is banished from the front page and into the history books? Pound said, in the ABC of Reading, that ‘literature is news that STAYS news.’ Eliot, on the other hand, was ...”

“... to Arms. The desire for combat is paramount. ‘Not everyone feels such things so intensely,’ James Fenton writes in his introduction to the Everyman edition of the Collected Stories. Many are simply relieved not to have to fight. But the real test for someone of Hemingway’s cast of mind is: to serve in war as a soldier under military ...”

“... Rumens, Andrew Motion. The exceptions, who compose naturally in a more spacious sequence, are James Fenton and of course Seamus Heaney himself. Heaney, in collaboration with Ted Hughes, has produced a most agreeable anthology, along the same lines as Walter de la Mare’s Behold this dreamer, or Wavell’s Other Men’s Flowers, a poet’s ...”

“... though no thanks to me. He has me reading some of the poems, which I don’t do particularly well. James Fenton, who is also reading, does much better because flatter. There are some clips of Auden I haven’t seen, possibly from German TV, and it’s interesting to see that his face doesn’t begin properly to crumple until the mid-1960s. Also note how ...”

“... in Bodley’s strongroom on the next shelf to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.’ 17 April. George Fenton comes round with a present, an overcoat from John Pearce, the fashionable tailor in Meard Street who specialises in remaking or renovating old clothes. The coat is French, long, black and once having had an astrakhan collar. It’s a lovely thing, but what ...”

“... South Devon Railway, Dawlish (1856) by J.W.G. Gutch. The Brady Studio’s Landing Supplies on the James River, Virginia (1863-64) was shot in a war zone regularly subject to Confederate sabotage; such a scene surely should be hectic, but only if you look very closely can you see the ghost of a horse-drawn wagon turning round. If early photography is possessed ...”

“... flashy reversing, zooming and stopping as the rear cars begin to turn round. In the course of this James R. goes over to one of the cars and asks them if they are looking for the man with a hammer, whereupon a policeman leaps from the car, and ignoring the open gate, vaults theatrically over the garden wall, shouting, ‘Here, we want you!’ and the young man ...”

“... James Purdy​ ’s literary career comes with its own creation myth. He had been making no headway until in 1956 Edith Sitwell read a privately printed book of his stories and, ravished, threw herself into finding him a publisher and an audience. In one version of the event, Don’t Call Me by My Right Name, the book Purdy sent from America to Italy, made the last stage of its journey supernaturally, materialising by Sitwell’s bedside when she woke from a nap ...”

“... between life and work.In 1998, the year his wife, Mary, died, a BBC documentary and a piece by Ben Fenton in the Telegraph began to unravel his story of himself. The headline findings were that his original name was Russ and he wasn’t Irish in any way. Instead he was the son of a failed London doctor whose own father, a furrier, had been an immigrant from ...”

“... a male, homosocial elite, owes much to the ethos and economy that grew up around the court of King James VI and I. By 1605-8, the likely date of Timon, the Scottish king had been on the English throne for several years, and a pattern had been established. He bought the loyalty of the nobility and the affection of handsome young men with jewels, gold vessels ...”

“... have many distinguished old boys though one which it never seems to acknowledge was the critic James Agate. This reticence may be on account of Agate’s well-known propensity to drink his own piss. 13 June. Three police acquitted in the case of Joy Gardner who died after being gagged with 13 inches of tape, a restraining belt and leg irons. It’s not ...”

“... in my first play, Forty Years On, which was running in the West End. One of the actors was George Fenton, who is doing the music for the film, and another was Keith McNally, the proprietor of Balthazar.15 January. The police officer who shot Mark Duggan is to be returned to firearms duty just as was the officer who shot Jean Charles de Menezes. The Met ...”

“... makeshift coathanger he has rigged up over the bath in order to dry his anorak.14 January. George Fenton tells me of a memorial service he’s been to at St Marylebone Parish Church for Maurice Murphy, the principal trumpet of the LSO, who did the opening trumpet solo in the music for Star Wars. The service due to kick off at 11.30, George arrives with ten ...”

“... is a continuing stain on the reputation of the university that solicited it.10 April. George Fenton has been in Berlin talking to some of the Berlin Philharmonic with whom he is due to record and conduct his Blue Planet music. They go out to supper in a restaurant in what was East Berlin, a vast converted warehouse where the food is superb. The Germans ...”