Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch’s letters to Raymond Queneau.

Issue 111

Joseph O’Neill

‘Late at night, we took an exit at Sharon and checked into a Holiday Inn.’

Issue 111

Colin Grant

‘It was a big news day. We were going to look for a piece of lino for the back room.’

Issue 111

Richard Russo

‘What I’d noticed, actually, was that none of the men on the island were missing fingers.’

Owen Sheers

‘I’ve always been as surprised by what continues in Zimbabwe as much as by what has been lost; the shards of ‘normal’ life that survive in such a frayed society.’

Allen Ginsberg & Jack Kerouac

‘Your isolation like mine is sad and frightful mainly the blind alleys of money and love but life is not over, and much to be written.’

William Fiennes

‘We talked a lot about voice – the idea that everyone has a voice, their own voice, and this is something to be valued and celebrated.’

Wesley Stace

Wesley Stace on listening to every live recording of David Bowie. ‘He was always a step ahead.’

Colin Grant

‘Such a spectacle could not have been envisaged ten years previously at the time of Bob Marley’s death from cancer.’

Philip Pullman

Adam Mars-Jones

‘Obscure repertoire is a sensible hiding-place for mediocre technique.’

Anonymous

‘For the last fifteen years she has been richly kept by a Russian prince, who revels in her brutality, viciousness, extravagance and love of brandy.’

Kapka Kassabova

‘Last month, a plastic surgeon in Buenos Aires tried to seduce me.’

Issue 110

Marie Darrieussecq

‘I am aware that according to present-­day criteria, the story I am about to tell contains several shocking scenes which fall within the realms of sexual harassment and cruelty towards animals.’