One day in 1936, the barrister Clifford Mortimer banged his head on the door frame of a London taxi and was immediately struck blind. He would never be able to see again. Then in his early 50s, he nev

ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL COX Going full Celt VOICING ...

● CERTAIN PHRASES, LIFTED FROM famous writers, ...

I don’t live at home with my three younger siblings anymore. I have my own flat which is shoe-box-sized, but mine, and I can read there whenever I like. I’ve always been a reader, ever since my mum sh

THE MARK OF A GREAT, TOUGH BOOK MAY NOT be how many literature classes it’s taught in but how many film or TV adaptations you can drape on its branches without breaking them. Dramatizations are tricky

Who, today, remembers Robert Vas? His Refuge England (1959), a partly autobiographical account of a Hungarian migrant trying to make sense of London—its confusing streets and dizzying profusion of sig