“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.” — Robert Burns (epigraph often associated with Irvine Welsh’s themes) The Granton Star Cause The first story […]
English literature
Filth
“The same routine. The same routine. The same routine. The same routine. The same routine. The same routine. The same routine. The same routine. The same routine. The […]
English literature
Trainspotting
“Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television…” — Trainspotting Part One: The Skag Boys The novel opens with a […]
English literature
Smiley’s People
“The secret services are the only real measure of a nation’s political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.” Chapter 1: The Call An elderly Russian émigré, […]
English literature
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
“What do you think spies are: priests, saints, and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists, and drunkards, people who play cowboys […]
English literature
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
“The secret services are the only real measure of a nation’s political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.” Chapter 1 George Smiley, a recently retired British […]
English literature
The Magus
“I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history […]
English literature
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
“I have yet to meet a phallus with scruples.” — John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman Chapters 1–7 The novel opens in 1867 in Lyme Regis, England, where […]
English literature
The Children’s Book
“All the best stories are but one story in reality—the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times—how to escape.” […]
English literature
Possession
“The book was thick and black and covered with dust. Its boards were bowed and creaking; it had been maltreated in its own time. Its spine was missing, […]