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The Latest Breaking News from WH Auden

‘We live in heavy times’: David Dimbleby on making an art show with his daughter – and why the BBC ‘lost its will’

During lockdown, the TV anchor and his artist daughter Liza expressed their fears by sending each other drawings rather than letters. As the exhibition this inspired opens, he talks about his favourite themes – war, torture, death – and why the BBC needs a full reset

The Guardian - UK

The Island: WH Auden and the Last of Englishness review – a deep dive into the poet’s early years

Nicholas Jenkins’s exhaustive volume – part biography, part literary study, part marathon – draws together the many influences on the young writer, from the first world war to his fascination with the lead mines of the Pennines

The Guardian - UK

Can’t get you out of my head: why pop culture is still under Kafka’s spell

A century on from the author’s death, the word ‘kafkaesque’ has survived wrangles over his estate, calls for its banishment and being used on the Simpsons and misused as a meme. How did it gain such a hold over culture?

The Guardian - UK

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We should cherish handwriting: the scribbled, the scrawled, the stubbornly jotted

Our communications lose character when we give up putting pen to paper. It’s hard to imagine an Auden poem celebrating the arrival of the night email

The Guardian - UK

The week in classical: Jephtha; 7 Deaths of Maria Callas; Perfection, of a Kind: Britten vs Auden – review

Handel’s majestic final oratorio holds its own in Oliver Mears’s searching new production; Marina Abramović channels Maria Callas; and a well-told tale of when Britten met Auden

The Guardian - UK

The Penguin Book of Elegy by Andrew Motion and Stephen Regan review – surprisingly uplifting

From Charlotte Brontë grieving Emily to Ted Hughes lamenting a lamb, this exceptional anthology of poems is full of scholarly discernment

The Guardian - UK

A punk, a monkey, a maths genius … our pick of local heroes who deserve a blue plaque

With the London scheme poised to go national, Observer writers make their cases for a few of the many overlooked, snubbed or merely forgotten figures who richly deserve recognition

The Guardian - UK

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An all-time great: how Michael Parkinson changed British television

He pioneered new formats, could get almost any guest in the world and conducted the best interviews ever. Parky was one of the finest broadcasters of any era

The Guardian - UK

Digested week: jingoism in odd places on a visit to post-Brexit Blighty

Supermarket goods festooned with union jacks; ‘made in Britain’ labels everywhere. How my former homeland has changed

The Guardian - UK

‘Lightweight’ Betjeman was initially overlooked for poet laureate

Newly released government files reveal bitter in-fighting over the prestigious literary appointment

Evening Standard

No 10 dismissed ‘songster of tennis lawns’ Sir John Betjeman as poet laureate

Newly-released government files reveal bitter in-fighting over prestigious literary appointment

The Independent UK

No 10 turned down poets John Betjeman, Philip Larkin and Robert Graves for laureate job

Newly released government files reveal bitter in-fighting over the prestigious literary appointment

The Independent UK

John Betjeman dismissed as ‘songster of tennis lawns’ in 1967 search for poet laureate

Records from the National Archive reveal the cut-throat world of British poetry, and the politics behind selecting candidates

The Guardian - UK

‘Lightweight’ Betjeman overlooked for poet laureate

Newly-released government files reveal bitter in-fighting over the prestigious literary appointment.

The Independent UK

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The Guardian - UK

Twitter rips into Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘pretentious’ poetry – except it’s actually by Shelley

The former Labour leader posted the famous ‘Rise like lions’ verse to promote his poetry anthology – but Twitter users thought it was his own, and weren’t impressed

The Guardian - UK

Poem of the week: Poem XVII by WH Auden

This mysterious work from 1930 is very tempting to read as a conflicted love poem by the young gay poet

The Guardian - US

My kids love detective stories – and, as I read with them, I can see why

I look forward to our nightly literary escapades. In a day-to-day in which so many things are a mystery, it’s comforting to immerse myself in a world in which problems have solutions

The Guardian - US

‘Whatever the zeitgeist was at the time, he was at the center’: the incredible life of Earl McGrath

The record producer and man of many other cultural hats left behind a treasure trove of rare recordings that are finally seeing the light of day

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The Conversation

Art, freedom and drag invasions: the history of New York's Fire Island as a gay sanctuary

Recently screened at the Sydney Film Festival, Fire Island is a rom-com inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the film breaking traditional conventions to feature gay romance as the plot.

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