Issue 13

In April 2003 The BBC launched the Big Read and asked the nation to name its favourite books. Seeing the list as a catalyst for the type of wide-range reading The Reader encourages, we joined in with events throughout the summer. However, Issue 13 seeks to celebrate the various rather than ‘the best’, the classics as well as the current favourites.

Helen Dunmore finds something beyond the swash and buckle in Treasure Island:
…the astonishing thing about Treasure Island is that it still comes at the reader with such freshness and brilliance…

Poet Peter Robinson remembers how he became a reader:
…I was lucky enough to come into contact with two devoted English teachers…who first noticed, then encouraged, the reader and writer.

Poet James Aitchison finds the line where readers become poets and poets become readers:
The experience is ours but the words are the poet's, emerging with an odd effect that is almost like creation and almost like memory.

ALSO: Andrea Ashworth on Alice Sebold's Lucky, Tom Sperlinger on The Story of Art, poetry from David Constantine, reviews and recommedations of Stevie Smith, J.K Rowling, Edward Thomas, John Keats and Julia Blackburn.

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