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Explore Essays and memoir

Uncle Ed

Keith Fleming

‘Back in 1976 when I was sixteen, my uncle, the novelist Edmund White, rescued me from the messy aftermath of my parents' divorce and brought me to live with him in New York’.

The Oddity of Height

Fergus Fleming

‘The culprit was height.’

Vinyl Road Trip

David Flusfeder

After an unexpected email, David Flusfeder heads to Detroit to discover his father’s history and the world of vinyl manufacturing.

To Thine Own Self Be True

David Flusfeder

‘If Shakespeare’s characters stand for anything, it’s for a slipperiness of identity.’ David Flusfeder on a dog named Shakespeare.

The Last Shopkeepers of London

David Flusfeder

‘It became a kind of mission to find contemporaries of theirs that weren’t closing down, establishments that have continued to flourish, or at least endure.’

The Tree Farm

Cal Flyn

‘I was going north to find a tree farm, in a land where there are no trees.’

Winterkill

Cal Flyn

‘Wildlife foundations find themselves calling for the deaths of tens of thousands of wild animals.’

Idi’s Banquet

Giles Foden

‘I did almost nothing on my first day as Idi Amin's doctor.’

Bad Faith

Ken Follett

‘Every sect needs jargon. We did not have churches, we had halls; services were called meetings; the congregation was the assembly; elders were overseers’

Tshinanu

Naomi Fontaine

‘Language is a risk that a nation takes. If a language survives, its people do too.’ Translated from the French by David Homel.

Tshinanu

Naomi Fontaine

Plus tard, ils me diront comme tu étais un grand homme. Un savant. Un érudit de la chasse.

El Salvador: An Aide-Mémoire

Carolyn Forché

‘It is my feeling that the twentieth-century human condition demands a poetry of witness.’

Where Does Writing Come From?

Richard Ford

‘Occasionally if pushed or annoyed I'll come right out and say it: I make these little buggers up, that's what. So sue me’.

Between Them

Richard Ford

‘It was my child’s outlook to think most things were right. And yet if life’s eternal drama is of events seeking a more perfect state, their life and mine was not that.’