One day at school–an all-boys comprehensive on the border between London and Kent–our music teacher told us that John Lennon and Paul McCartney didn’t actually write those famous Beatles songs we loved so much.
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‘One day at school–an all-boys comprehensive on the border between London and Kent–our music teacher told us that John Lennon and Paul McCartney didn't actually write those famous Beatles songs we loved so much.'
One day at school–an all-boys comprehensive on the border between London and Kent–our music teacher told us that John Lennon and Paul McCartney didn’t actually write those famous Beatles songs we loved so much.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
Hanif Kureishi grew up in Kent and studied philosophy at King’s College London. He was chosen as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. His novels include The Buddha of Suburbia, which won the 1990 Whitbread Award for First Novel, The Black Album, Intimacy and The Last Word. He has been appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. His next book, What Happened?, a collection of essays and stories, is published in 2019.
More about the author →‘My response to the music had reminded me that concealed inside myself was a more excitable and open self raring to get out.’
‘The warmest companion with the coldest vision of where Humanity might head.’
‘Bradford, I felt, was a place I had to see for myself, because it seemed that so many important issues, of race, culture, nationalism, and education, were evident in an extremely concentrated way.’
Marcel Proust’s letters to his neighbour, translated from the French by Lydia Davis.
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