In this issue we explore, and play, with the idea of time.
Frank Cottrell Boyce gives us his funny and moving new story, 'Accelerate', in which a woman wishes away time, which of course cannot be recalled. Our serialisation of Mary Weston's short novel The Junction begins in this issue; set in the First World War, it has flashbacks to the past and flash-forwards to a parallel place which may be a sort of heaven. Poet Andrew McNeillie writing about his early reading life and his fascination with words, with memory, with time, and speed, and slowness. Actress Janet Suzman is interviewed on rhythm and pace in speech. Plus there are the 'relatives' of some of our writers: Ian McMillan's son combining with his father; Frank Cottrell Boyce's father choosing a book.
Issue 31 also contains the second half of Les Murray's personal selection of his favourite Australian poems of all time. Howard Jacobson argues for the good of books that tell you what to do (it sounds a sober subject but in his hands it is exhilarating and encouraging, and entirely persuasive: Jane Austen and Samuel Johnson join with George Eliot and Kafka to give us a good talking to). Jeffrey Wainwright writes about his poem, 'Mere Bagatelle 1' in the latest Poet on His Work, letting us see into the poem's beginnings. Raymond Tallis, polymath and long-time friend of The Reader, gives us his funny account of the role of the asterisk in literature, 'Reader, I Sh*gged Him'. It's a history of sex and the written word.
Rudyard Kipling's Kim is investigated by our panel for Readers Connect, while in The Old Poem, Brian Nellist writes about Thomas Randolph's 'Upon His Picture'. In Book World Kirsty McHugh talks about the world of blogging, and Maureen Watry celebrates the donation of material from Brian Patten and Roger McGough to the University of Liverpool's library archive.
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