Explore Essays and memoir
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Gandhi the Londoner
Sam Miller
‘On 29 September 1888, an Indian teenager with a mild case of ringworm and a fine head of hair sailed into the Thames Estuary.’ Sam Miller on Ghandi's time in London.
Yiyun Li | First Sentence
Yiyun Li
‘But for her, and perhaps for many, the solidity of an invented life is not trustworthy.’
Doris Lessing | A London View
Doris Lessing
‘No one driving along it could possibly guess the truth.’
Rowing to Alaska
Wayne McLennan
‘I can't remember whose idea it was, whose heart first beat faster, who made the other excited, but at some point Doug and I decided to row a boat to Alaska.’
La Orgía Perpetua An Essay on Sexuality and Realism
Mario Vargas Llosa
‘No character has been more persistently and passionately present than Emma Bovary.’
A very young Dancer
Todd McEwen
‘I have a snapshot of the two of us: late on a summer afternoon we're playing in an inflatable wading pool.‘
The Death of a Chair
Doris Lessing
‘To attack the chair I equipped myself with a saw, sharp scissors and a claw hammer.’
Truth and Reconciliation
Elena Lesley
‘‘Only the spirit of the earth knows where the soul has gone,’ Bou said of his lost wife, ‘or where the bodies are buried’.’
Prague: A Disappearing Poem
Milan Kundera
‘Prague, this dramatic and suffering centre of Western destiny, is gradually fading away into the mists of Eastern Europe, to which it has never really belonged.’
Julio Cortázar, 1914-84
Gabriel García Márquez
‘I felt he was the most impressive person I've known.’
