‘This was the wild bunch that peopled my childhood nightmares.’
I love this snap. It is the only photograph I know of my father, mother and three siblings together and like all team photos in my life it has its own tale to tell. Inevitably, because of its age, the tale does not have a happy ending.
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‘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.
‘It’s terrible to be young, always randy; one needs material.’
An extract from Love, Leda by Mark Hyatt.
‘Cigarettes, lorgnons, eggs benedict, cocktails mixed with maple syrup, long spills down Lanvin suits.’ Julia Armfield on why Mary McCarthy’s The Group is the best book of 1963.
‘They had believed they were coming to a new town. But, they said, Harlow wasn’t new: it looked old.’
‘On a cold morning last January, I travelled out to the Norfolk Fens to see a ghost.’
