Critical Times

A comprehensive, colourful and entertaining history of 100 years of that great British institution, The Times Literary Supplement, published for its centenary year in 2002. This text is not only a "biography" of an institution, but it is a reflection of the changes in British literature and culture throughout the 20th century. From its first tenuous year, 1902, when it was conceived of by the then manager of The Times Moberley Bell, to its modern-day incarnation, the Times Literary Supplement has been home to an astonishing assemblage of outstanding writers. This work also reveals for the first time the identities of the journal's anonymous reviewers since 1902 - a tradition which lasted until 1974. What emerges is a record of British writing and writers, working against the backdrop of their times. For instance, through the period of the Boer War, Rudyard Kipling, Virginia Woolf and John Buchan joined the paper's reviewing team; and during the World War I, with the paper reflecting on the rightness of that war, it attracted Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon to its ranks.
By the World War II, the paper articulated the fear and anger felt towards Nazi Germany with such commentators as Orwell and Evelyn Waugh. And so the TLS continues to hold a mirror up to politics, culture and society through to the modern day. Derwent May, formerly of the TLS himself, also examines the ethos and aims of the paper's editors, management and staff; the dilemmas, controversies, the jests, the quarrels, the court cases and relations between writers and critics.