"[John Betjeman's] ability to make people laugh resounds through this book as persistently as church bells do through …"

"When I first came here Hampstead Heath] I was starting my second novel, The Folding Star, which is a very twilight bo…"

"I was sent there Canford School] in 1967, at the age of thirteen, and at some point in my first year was issued with …"

"Hollinghurst moves characters between background and foreground in different sections, meticulously picking up figure…"

"There are strong echoes of Powell and Waugh, but Hollinghurst's richly textured narrative and achingly evocative pros…"

"Carrying both this comedy and the book's angry elegies is Hollinghurst's beautiful prose, which mixes the colloquial …"

"The more I thought about it, the more obsessed I became with the idea of a swimming journey. I started to dream ever …"

"From water level, I observed the mating joined in flight like refuelling aircraft, and the random progress of the clo…"

"It is through trees that we see and hear the wind: woodland people can tell the species of a tree from the sound it m…"

"Waterlog (1999), Roger's now-classic account of swimming through Britain, published twenty years ago this year, opens…"