Friday, January 04, 2008

Look, ma! Another list!

This time it's the 50 Greatest British writers since 1945 (with the authors I've read in bold):

1. Philip Larkin

2. George Orwell

3. William Golding

4. Ted Hughes

5. Doris Lessing

6. J. R. R. Tolkien

7. V. S. Naipaul

8. Muriel Spark

9. Kingsley Amis

10. Angela Carter

11. C. S. Lewis

12. Iris Murdoch

13. Salman Rushdie

14. Ian Fleming

15. Jan Morris

16. Roald Dahl

17. Anthony Burgess

18. Mervyn Peake

19. Martin Amis

20. Anthony Powell

21. Alan Sillitoe

22. John Le Carré

23. Penelope Fitzgerald

24. Philippa Pearce

25. Barbara Pym

26. Beryl Bainbridge

27. J. G. Ballard

28. Alan Garner

29. Alasdair Gray

30. John Fowles

31. Derek Walcott

32. Kazuo Ishiguro

33. Anita Brookner

34. A. S. Byatt

35. Ian McEwan

36. Geoffrey Hill

37. Hanif Kureshi

38. Iain Banks

39. George Mackay Brown

40. A. J. P. Taylor

41. Isaiah Berlin

42. J. K. Rowling

43. Philip Pullman

44. Julian Barnes

45. Colin Thubron

46. Bruce Chatwin

47. Alice Oswald

48. Benjamin Zephaniah

49. Rosemary Sutcliff

50. Michael Moorcock

4 comments:

  1. You might very well enjoy Angela Carter's book of short stories, The Bloody Chamber. It's her take on a number of fairy tales. Twisted is not too strong a term, but elegantly done.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I read the story "The Bloody Chamber" last fall. I'm not so sure I have the wherewithal to read any more from that collection. Have you read Wise Children? I have a copy of that. . .

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous1:07 PM

    I'm, as usual, *shocked* at certain omissions, but no one, of course, asked me....

    Jim Crace
    David Mitchell (longlisted)
    Zadie Smith (longlisted)
    Lawrence Norfolk
    A.L Kennedy
    Terry Pratchett
    Douglas Adams

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have ~got~ to make time to read Norfolk, don't I? I've read at least one by all the others and they all seem deserving in their own way. . .

    Hey, John, did you hear that Edgerton has a new book coming out this year? Now I'll be three novels behind instead of two.

    Must read faster.

    ReplyDelete

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