Culture

When an unpublished diary or book of letters from a celebrated writer comes to the attention of the reading public nowadays, there is often a sense that a game is being played between two parties. Writers — being the megalomaniacs they invariably are — dream of grandiosity and world domination, therefore these documents are predominately contrived from the moment pen goes to paper. They are for potential posterity, and a legacy, rather than any truthful insights. The readers readily take part in this charade, hoping to catch their idols off guard in the process.

St. George’s Day, 23rd April, is Shakespeare’s birthday. You may get a present, if you are in the right place at the right time. World Book Night, the event where enthusiasts give a book to passers-by, will take place this evening. The organisers hope that 2.5 million copies of 25 books will be given away by 78,000 volunteers in the United States, Britain, Germany and Ireland. This massive undertaking is laudable, even though the selection of books is wholly unimaginative. Martina Cole, Audrey Niffenegger and Bernard Cornwell may not need more readers, but their best-selling pot-boilers might get more people reading. Like all the best things in life, one book leads to another.

April showers break the long March drought, and bring pilgrims to Canterbury; to the shrine, or what remains of it, of St Thomas Becket. There are several historic routes to Canterbury: the Pilgrim’s Way, which runs along the Downs escarpment from Winchester through Sussex and Kent. And there are more modern paths, such as the Via Francigena, which begins in Rome. Canterbury Cathedral’s website says that the pilgrimage from Rome has grown popular in the last ten years, which attests to the revival of interest in English medieval saints and the present strength of Catholic faith. Pilgrims have been coming to Canterbury since before the canonisation of ‘the turbulent priest’ in 1173, two and a half years after his murder in 1170.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce starts with a wonderfully simple idea. Harold Fry, resident of 13 Fossebridge Road, gets a letter from an old friend, Queenie Hennessy, saying she is dying of cancer. He drafts a reply and goes out to post it. He reaches the post box and, instead of slotting it in, decides to walk to the next one. And the next one after that. Before long, he concludes that a letter is not enough. He will have to walk to Queenie Hennessy himself. Only one snag: the journey from Kingsbridge to Berwick-upon-Tweed is 627 miles. So starts the tale of a modern pilgrim. The epigraph of the novel comes from John Bunyan, and the classic themes of pilgrimage — contemplation, purging of past sins — are threaded through the novel.

Few countries elicit as much bewilderment as Pakistan — unstable and unreliable, it is simultaneously a friend and foe. Indeed, over the last decade Islamabad has arguably aided the War on Terror as much as it has hindered it. The stakes could barely be higher. A nuclear power in which terrorist groups operate with near impunity, it sits in the strategic heart of South Asia bordering Iran, Afghanistan, China, and India. Its Baluchistan port, Gwadar, is just 200 miles from the Straits of Hormuz — a vital channel for seaborne oil exports threatened with blockade by the Iranians should it be attacked. The United States may well be looking to withdraw from Afghanistan in the coming years, but it cannot not exculpate itself from the region for the foreseeable future.

There was drama at the Pulitzer Prize last night. No fiction prize was awarded for the first time in 35 years. The judges were unable to reach a decision in the race between David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, Karen Russel’s Swamplandia! and Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams. Literary bigwigs in America have expressed shock. Jane Smiley — who won the prize in 1992 for her reimagining of King Lear, A Thousand Acres — sent an email to The Press Association saying, 'I can’t believe there wasn’t a worthy one. It’s a shame. But sometimes a selection committee really cannot agree, and giving no award is the outcome. Too bad.' Meanwhile, John Lewis Gaddis took the biography award for his life George F.

‘Cherrie-Ripe’ Cherrie-ripe, Ripe, Ripe, I cry, Full and faire ones; come and buy: If so be, you ask me where They doe grow? I answer, There, Where my Julia’s lips doe smile; There’s the Land, or Cherry-Ile: Whose Plantations fully show All the yeere, where Cherries grow. This short poem’s interest comes from its rapid changes of tone and speaker. These add complexity, surprise, and irony to what would otherwise be a cliché (‘my girlfriend’s lips look like cherries’). The first four lines seem to belong to a busy street-scene. ‘Cherry-ripe’ was a call used by hawkers selling cherries in 17th century London. The first line tells us that the speaker of the poem is crying it.