After an unnerving couple of days when the site was inaccessible, we are now -- thanks to the helpful Tech Support people at Dotster -- back on track. And what is even better is that we now have the beginnings of a Forum (see link on Home page) where we can all participate in discussion. This may take a little while to get going smoothly, but feel free to give it a try, register as a member/user, and post something. (I think you can do it yourselves, but I may have to do it for you, at least at first. If so, e-mail me and I will do what I can.) Onward and upward!
The critic and humorist Malcolm Muggeridge, in his excellent memoir Chronicles of Wasted Time vol. i (1972), has a passage that involves Morgan the Times theatre reviewer, which is too long to reproduce here but which you will find on the "Old News" page. Muggeridge, of course, belonged to the generation that incarnated what Nigel Jackson has called the "Anti-Morgan Animus", so you will know what to expect.
NB: Thanks to David Odell from Melbourne for drawing my attention to this passage, as well as to the John Bayley review. I don't know how many Morganians are old enough to remember the delicious illustrator Nicolas Bentley, but I suspect quite a few of us are. The son of Edward Clerihew Bentley, inventor of the clerihew, he illustrated, among many other things, George Mikes's "How To Be An Alien" and his other satires on countries. And in his charming little 1957 Penguin "How Can You Bear To Be Human?" he has a whole page on Charles Morgan, which I cannot bring myself not to reproduce in toto.
This website tends to like CM and his works, and most of what we publish here, accordingly, is admiring. However, it is salutary upon occasion to read other opinions; and by complete chance I discovered a 1957 review of A Challenge to Venus that illustrates with painful perfection the mentality described by Nigel Jackson in "The Anti-Morgan Animus". The review is by poet Jimmy Burns Singer and appeared, as part of an account of the month's new publications, in Encounter. Electronic reproduction is prohibited; but the website is open to all readers, and the link is here. Morganians my smile; but they will wince.
Those of you who have encountered mentions of Charles Morgan in, especially, 20th-century writings or conversation may have been surprised at what often sounded like casual dismissal or even contempt. Now Nigel Jackson has decided to take on this thorny topic in his latest essay "the Anti-Morgan Animus", which you will find on his page.
A recent web trawl turned up a Spectator review of Portrait in a Mirror from February 2, 1929. Most interesting. See it our Old News page.
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AuthorRoger Kuin, stumbling webmaster and lifelong admirer of Morgan's writing. Archives
June 2023
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