WHO'S READING WHAT...

YOU might think I would be weary of Henry James as a subject, but au contraire. I recently reread with great enjoyment Miranda Seymour's A Ring of Conspirators: Henry James and his Literary Circle 1895-1915, soon to be reissued as a paperback (Scribner).

It seems incredible that so many brilliant novelists were friends and neighbours in East Sussex at this time - HG Wells, Stephen Crane, Ford Madox Ford, and Joseph Conrad, with Henry James in Rye at the centre of the web.

I'm working my way through the third and final volume of Norman Sherry's monumental The Life of Graham Greene, published by Cape at the end of this month: an obsessively detailed but compelling portrait of a very extraordinary man and writer.

I've just begun The Falls (4th Estate), the latest novel by the awesomely prolific Joyce Carol Oates. And what a beginning it is! I was swept away.

. David Lodge's Author, Author, about Henry James, is published by Secker, Pounds 16.99.

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