Essays and reviews
Writing about writers and their work
Essays
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Anthony Hecht: The Life and Work of a Poet’s Poet, The Wall Street Journal, 3 November 2023
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Performing Is Learning: A Teacher’s Memoir, Los Angeles Review of Books, 30 May 2022
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War and Imagination, The Hudson Review, January 2022
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Beloved Immoralist: One Man’s Love of a Fictional Character – David Mason ponders his father’s attachment to Gulley Jimson, the protagonist of Joyce Cary’s ‘The Horse’s Mouth’, Los Angeles Review of Books, 26 December 2021
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Homage to Tom Stoppard, The Hudson Review, May 2021
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Les Murray, Dissident Poet, First Things, 30 April 2019
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Notes on Identity and Literature, The Woven Tale Press, 24 January 2019
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So No More He’ll Go A-Roving – Patrick Leigh Fermor was a maker of paradisiacal sentences that leave the reader hungry for life, The Wall Street Journal, 18 June 2011
Reviews
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‘Butterfly of Dinard’ Review: Eugenio Montale’s Human Comedy, The Wall Street Journal, 1 November 2024
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Auden’s Way, The Hudson Review, September 2024 – Nicholas Jenkins’ The Island is one of the books discussed in this review.
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Lord Byron – Seven Takes, The Hudson Review, February 2024
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The Example of Seamus Heaney, The Hudson Review, November 2023
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Kafka Agonistes, The Hudson Review, July 2023
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Edmund Keeley’s Poems of Age, The Hudson Review, July 2023
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The Eros of Shirley Hazzard, The Hudson Review, April 2023
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‘Strange Bewildering Time’ Review: Tripping From Turkey to Tibet, The Wall Street Journal, 23 March 2023
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‘The Greek Revolution’ Review: Hellenism and Heroism, A cause célèbre in its day, the Greek fight for independence inspired revolutionaries across Europe, The Wall Street Journal, 10 December 2021
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‘Stories’ and ‘True Stories’ Review: Life, Pinned to the Page, Fiction and reporting by an Australian writer with a cinematic prose style and an unflinching eye, The Wall Street Journal, 13 July 2018
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An Interview with David Mason, The Writer’s Chronicle, February 2016