All the wrong subjects
I like to think I’m not one to hold a grudge, but listen to this: When I was at school, we had one meeting with a Careers Officer in year 10 (or, the fourth year, as we used to call it). As I remember it, she was a woman with big spectacles, a clipboard and...
Lightning strikes
I don’t remember a time when I was not spinning tales of one kind or another. In long arduous sermons I’d cover my notebook in handwriting so cramped I never knew later who or what I’d conjured up; and lying in my bunk bed with my sister restless above me I’d be commanded to tell...
MA vs LON?
The perennial ‘Can writing be taught?’ question rarely seems far from the book pages, but a couple of creative-writing-related stories have received particular media attention this year. One was Hanif Kureishi’s slightly mischievous comment that creative writing courses are a “waste of time” (he teaches the subject at Kingston University). The other was the publication...
