The golden age of criticism?

There are good reasons why serious writers no longer review in the national press

INSPIRED — IF THAT IS THE RIGHT word — by a piece in the Literary Review by D.J. Taylor (of this parish) the Secret Author recently shelled out for a copy of Piers Brendon’s memoir of Tom Sharpe. In his day, Mr Sharpe (1928-2013, below) was a celebrated comic novelist, much televised and translated, and yet the fascination of Tom Sharpe: A Personal Memoir (Peach Publishing) turned out to rest not so much on Brendon’s take on the various neuroses which seemed to underpin his subject’s considerable oeuvre as on his analysis of the literary marketplace in which Sharpe made his equally considerable living. Of particular interest, to anyone beguiled by the protocols of bygone Grub Street, was some of Brendon’s reportage from the 1970s reviewing circuit. What happened when…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December/January 2025

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