John Self

If you want to understand how the world works now, read a classic

Page-turning, socially intriguing and melodramatic to the point of campness

There is only one way for a writer to escape: to release experience into prose

The measure of a novel is not its ideas but how it animates those ideas

David Lodge’s work appealed to the highbrow as much as lovers of lowbrow farce

Amid brands and trends, how do we identify the good stuff?

There’s a pleasure in every paragraph and a tartness to set off the sweetness

Few literary activities could give quite so much pleasure as reading the work of this brilliant but overlooked novelist

Dry-ish, spare, clear-eyed — rare in a world of literary bloat, sentiment and overstatement

Cleverness is a virtue in itself but is never sterile or without purpose