I’ve lately been doing some research into the poet, editor and biographer, Ian Hamilton, for which purpose I’ve been spending a lot of time with his magazine, the New Review. Though it lasted only four years (1974–8) and fifty issues, no single publication, as far as I’m concerned, has had more of an influence on British literary culture over the past half century. Some of that is down to what it published – the many stories, essays, poems that have gone on to achieve canonical status; just as much is to do with its creation of what Ian McEwan has called “a milieu”. From its second home in the Pillars of Hercules pub on Soho’s Greek Street (the
This is a terrific selection, thank you so much