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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Come to my event at Foyles on Monday and I'll spill the beans.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Isn't it? One day I am going to tell the story of the day A Brookner punched me in the street.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Thanks to everyone who has engaged with the book, almost everyone with interest and understanding.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Review in The New Statesman of AHOTNIB. "No academic critic wouid dare."

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Excellent review in Prospect by Fiammetta Rocco - it's good to have another careful and intelligent review. It's had universally ecstatic reviews so far.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

If a student of mine made any one of these mistakes, misquotations, accusations of bad faith, getting names of authors or titles so badly wrong in an essay, I'd ask them to submit it again. Take this as a learning experience in professional standards.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Come on Adam, at least get the name of an author you're reviewing right. I know you did this in a hurry, reviewing a 600 page book 24 hours after it came out, but this is getting ridiculous.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

My book's only been out four days, and it's got a 4.9 rating on goodreads - intelligently reviewed, too. The Guardian called it a "masterpiece"; the Times said it was "exemplary"; the Spectator said it was "the most enjoyable work of literary criticism I've read for many years."

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

i recommend an excellent history by Sam Leith, The Haunted Wood. It's simply not practical to include all the things Roberts said I should. My book discusses 2,000 novels in 600 pages. Children's books and much larger quantities of SF than the hundred or so I discuss - can't be done.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

It is not reasonable to assume that an 800 word review refers to every one of the 750 novelists in a substantial history, and then criticising the book on the basis of total ignorance of its contents. Anyway I'm done here - thanks for your contribution,

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I appreciate that - the anonymous gent who started this baseless complaint has now blocked me, so I am afraid my conversation with him about the excellent Kate Roberts is over.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

That's not for you to decide. Hau ab!

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I think you may like to put your degree of rage and contempt on hold until you have bought and read the book, after which, of course, you may insult me and anyone else to your heart's contempt.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I didn't learn Welsh but read what I couid in translation, noting the fact. Where I could read a novel in the original language, eg in French, German or Italian, I did so. Where no translation could be tracked down, I drew on native readers. If i couidn't find one (Cornish or Manx) I said so.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

It covers some novels written in Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, German, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Japanese and Bengali. I don't know where you get your "definitely" from.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

P.389. Unlike you, I don't pass dismissive judgement on books I haven't even seen. If you think a study that discusses 2,000 novels is a basic 1st year undergraduate text, your undergraduates may be different to mine.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

So you'd be in favour of preventing any refuge that catered only to abused women, even if every other refuge was open to all other victims? It seems fairly clear to me which of the two is "anti-rights."

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

It's so tragic that Amnesty failed in its attempt to close down a refuge for female victims of abuse. It was the only one in Scotland, but why should there be any? I mean, there weren't until JKR put her own money into it.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 02/11/2023

Wrote about Vegemite’s 100th birthday for the Spectator! www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-...

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 01/11/2023

Today I had risotto with pumpkin for dinner and it was tip top. The dog had some too.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 01/11/2023

The Blue Flower is for me one of the greatest novels of the century. There are only nine novels - it’s terrible when you get to the end of them.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 28/10/2023

I have been looking at this thread and Michele, you are the first contributor I might have a drink with. ANYWAY Bleak House Lessico Famigliare (Ginzburg) and Moominland Midwinter or The Magic Mountain, one of the two.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 28/10/2023

Come and have lunch soon and we’ll reassure each other that we’re not mental xxxx

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 28/10/2023

Today’s protest in London seemed to me to revive the ancient blood libel against Jews. Here are dead babies, killed by Jews. I don’t know that this will ever end. And how could those protestors do that, knowing what Hamas did to Israeli babies two weeks ago? How could they?

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 27/10/2023

Oh, I adored that film when I was a child, and it turned out to be just as good as I remembered.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 23/10/2023

The Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen are only 30 minutes away. The opera’s great, one of the best orchestras in Europe.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 18/10/2023

Is there a more perfect play than Uncle Vanya? Andrew Scott’s one-man version as funny and ruinously devastating emotionally as it’s ever been.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 12/10/2023

I loved H H so much…I think maybe he was not so much ahead of his time as a wonderful hangover from 1970s Hollywood…?

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 11/10/2023

I understand. You were among the thirty or forty Jewish friends that I thought of immediately. All our love.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 11/10/2023

I am not (as you must know) a person of abstract principles. And when something like this happens I think “How could you? How could you?” And not, I’m afraid , “But what about…?” My thoughts and love go out to you and everyone you know touched or worse by this. Xxx

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 11/10/2023

Butting in like a twerp. Yeah, Sam’s right, it’s the loss of the real-time observer of events that’s so bad. Twitter just didn’t narrate the events in Israel as it has momentous events in the past. This place seems a bit dull at the mo but who knows?

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 11/10/2023

I celebrate and respect your decency and truth with all the humility I can muster. And then I think “What does the Israeli government want to achieve?” And then “What does Hamas want to achieve?” And the answer to the second, which is “Kill all Jews” makes me think there’s no equivalence here.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 10/10/2023

I love seeing this. As a boy I was an insane frequenter of second hand bookshops. I cannot imagine a writer who didn’t feel warm towards a buyer of old books, even their own.

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Philip Hensher @philiphensher.bsky.social · 10/10/2023

First MA workshop of the term at Bath Spa. The nice thing - you never know what idea is going to walk through the door, each October.

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