View from America (Evening Standard)

Written for publication in The Evening Standard, View from America is a series of articles on the American scene, heavily focused on politics and social life.

Visit the 'View from America' Archive

Things That Have Interested Me (The Guardian)

Written for publication in The Guardian, Things That Have Interested Me was an article series formerly written by Ian Jack (editor of Granta). The series was continued by James Fenton beginning September 2006 to May 2008. The James Fenton Website archives these articles in their entirety.

Visit the 'Things That Have Interested Me' Archive

In My Good Books (The Guardian)

Written for publication in The Guardian, In My Good Books was a series of articles on the literary aspects of biography, autobiography, and life-writing in general. The James Fenton Website archives these articles in their entirety and with all editorial deletions restored.

Visit the 'In My Good Books' Archive

Miscellaneous Articles

'Of the Martian School.' New Statesman (20 October 1978): 520.

'The Manifesto against Manifestoes.' Poetry Review 73.3 (September 1983): 12-16.

'Hell set to music.' The Guardian (16 July 2005) [Mandelstam's reading of Dante].

'The Play's the Thing.' The Guardian (23 July 2005) [Revival of the opera The Mines of Sulphur, by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett].

'Sitting Pretty.' The Guardian (3 September 2005) [Intriguing portraits of writers and artists, some for sale in an upcoming auction].

'No Song Without Words.' Times Literary Supplement (14 October 2005): 14 [The troubled relationship between librettists and composers].

'The Sadist and the Stutterer.' The Guardian (2 December 2005) [On Herman Melville's unfinished novella Billy Budd being turned into a homoerotic opera].

'Nature Boy.' New York Times Book Review (1 January 2006): 7 [Review of Wordsworth: A Life by Juliet Barker. Note: Registration may be required to view online].

'A Poke in the Eye with a Poem.' The Guardian (21 October 2006) [Review of Horse Latitudes by Paul Muldoon].

' "Don't ask, don't tell".' The Guardian (4 November 2006) [On poets who address a lover of the same sex].

'Floral Tributes.' The Guardian (30 December 2006) [Review of Botanical Riches: Stories of Botanical Exploration by Richard Aitken].

'A Voice of His Own.' The Guardian (3 February 2007) [Fenton on W. H. Auden].

'Elizabeth Bishop's Christian Sin.'The Times Literary Supplement (11 April 2007) [Bishop's 'The Unbeliever' & its source in Bunyan].

'The Hounding of a Nobel Poet Has Shamed Oxford.' The Evening Standard (15 May 2009) [Fenton on Derek Walcott].

'Jazzing Up Hazlitt', New York Review of Books 56.11 (2 July 2009) [Rev. of William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man, by Duncan Wu; New Writings of William Hazlitt, edited by Duncan Wu; and Hazlitt in Love: A Fatal Attachment, by Jon Cook]. Note: Full text access limited to subscribers or purchasers of the article.

'Kingsley Amis: Against Fakery.' In The Movement Reconsidered: Essays on Larkin, Amis, Gunn, Davie, and Their Contemporaries. Ed. Zachary Leader. Oxford University Press, 2009. 106-122. (UK, US, Canada)

New York Review of Books

Fenton frequently writes for the NYRB. Please vVisit the NYRB website for a list of articles ranging back to 1984.

James Fenton Reads

"The Cherry Orchard Has to Come Down" (1996) -- To celebrate The New York Review of Books' 35th Anniversary, James Fenton, Robert Silvers, Jason Epstein, Susan Sontag, Jonathan Miller, Darryl Pinckney, Joan Didion, Alma Guillermoprieto, and Elizabeth Hardwick participated in an evening of Readings at the 92nd Street Y. Visit the New York Review of Books website to listen to the reading (9 mins).