ManClassics/ TO column/ etc

Little to report at the moment. Still chasing Time Out Manchester for ManClassics and a possible tie-in event with the Manchester Literary Festival: watch this space. Spent the Christmas period working on two more Time Out London columns: Julie Burchill’s Ambition and John Milton’s Areopagitica. Something of a contrast between them, you might say. I’m also working on the Cassell 1000 Key Moments of the 20^th Century the commissions list of which will more than keep me in Forgotten Classics – Knut Hamsun or Bohumil Hrabal anyone? – but as an activity it has prompted me to think about how many things are lost even if they are considered seminal. The book also suggests that literary history is something of a chronological ascent towards the contemporary (although it has welcome digressions along the way and a good dollop of populism). This kind of listmaking is useful and a key cultural phenomena but I’m ambivalent about being involved in it…