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“... The opening scene of Night Work, Thomas Glavinic’s Viennese novel, recalls something Karl Kraus said about the city in 1914: Vienna was a ‘Versuchsstation des Weltuntergangs’, an experimental station for the apocalypse. Jonas, Glavinic’s protagonist, gets up one morning and switches on the TV. There is no picture, only snow. He checks the post, but the paper hasn’t been delivered ...”

“... for John Betjeman) Miss Frith was put on processing; that glue And all those labels. Not seven months there, And Mr Mortimer, who always said ‘Miss Frith’ and never ‘Gill’ or ‘Gillian’, Right through the informal Nineteen-Sixties, Rested one day his two hands on her hips As she sat cross-legged on the high stool At the labelling desk ...”

“... mode is the shadowy one of parody, as the current tone is the impassively ironic. Thus, Alan Brownjohn’s A Night in the Gazebo ends with a parody, an affectionate rewrite of Sir Gawain called ‘The Seventh Knight and the Green Cat’, which closes with a volte-face. Whatever Mr Brownjohn has to say he says ...”

“... as they are, can’t help not coming up to. The second or critical section is extremely strong: John Gross on the Oxford Book, George Hartley on the early publishing, Clive James on the jazz criticism as well as the poems, Alan Brownjohn on the novels, Christopher Ricks on Larkin’s poetic style and structure, Seamus ...”