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Recommended Reads: The Swimming-Pool Library
Alan Hollinghurst is best-known for his Booker Prize-winning The Line of Beauty (superbly adapted for television by BBC Drama), a…
A Note on Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh, who died forty years ago today is one of the best-loved of all Irish writers and was effectively…
Why are our children not reading?
British children are not reading as much as they used to and in particular they are not reading for pleasure.…
The Reader 28: Rising from the Depths
Issue 28 of The Reader magazine thumped onto the office doormat today (I'll be fine, really) and we could not…
Mersey Care Reads Update
In posts during October we introduced Mersey Care Reads, a joint project between The Reader and Mersey Care NHS Trust,…
Reader event: The Penny Readings
On the evening of Sunday 9th December, at St George's Hall in Liverpool, The Reader is hosting its fourth annual Penny Readings…
Biographer Stephen Gill: Wordsworth’s Prelude
The Reader’s outreach project, Get Into Reading, was kick-started by Melvyn Bragg’s Radio programme In Our Time. I was driving…
Featured Poem: Sonnet to William Wilberforce, Esq.
On November 26, 1731 the English poet and hymnodist William Cowper was born. Cowper trained as a lawyer but became…
Cranford: Sunday, 9PM, BBC1
Somehow this time of year always feels right for a good dramatic adaptation of a Victorian novel, just as it…
Vernon Scannell 1922-2007
The poet Vernon Scannell died last weekend aged 85. He was a prolific writer: eight novels, autobiographical memoirs, works of…
Featured Anthology: Staying Alive – Brendan Kennelly
As the end of the week arrives and the last poem from our featured anthology Staying Alive is posted, it…
Featured Anthology: Staying Alive – Miroslav Holub
The fourth poet to feature from Staying Alive is Miroslav Holub, who was one of the Czech Republic's most important poets and also a leading scientist…
