The Possessions of Doctor Forrest - the blog

I've been claiming the existence of this for so long without substance, you would think I believed in ghosts or something... However I'm pleased to say the official blog companion to the novel - www.doctorforrest.co.uk - is now online, and in early dispatches you can read my deathless views on Bram Stoker's Dracula and Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, with much, much more to come...

The ecstasies of Faber Finds...

It's increasingly easy for me to wax evangelical about Faber Finds, also to think of myself as occupying the happiest little job in publishing, when my editorship of the list allows me - indeed requires me - to be continually sourcing and reading brilliant if neglected books. Over on the Finds blog I've had a few things to say lately - such as this about the counter-insurgency theories of General Frank Kitson, and this on the fiction, long and short, of William Sansom. Sansom (pictured) would be a poster-boy for what I'm saying here - just a fantastic writer, a phenomenal crafter of sentences, and a highly deft storyteller. He is truly worth getting to know on the page. And this biographical sketch is worth a look too.