{"id":12412,"date":"2008-01-06T16:51:39","date_gmt":"2008-01-06T21:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=12412"},"modified":"2014-01-11T13:29:42","modified_gmt":"2014-01-11T18:29:42","slug":"the-50-greatest-british-writers-since-1945","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/06\/the-50-greatest-british-writers-since-1945\/","title":{"rendered":"The 50 greatest British writers since 1945?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>The Times<\/i> just published its list of the men and woman who compose <a href=\"http:\/\/entertainment.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/arts_and_entertainment\/books\/article3127837.ece\" target=\"_blank\">the 50 greatest British writers since 1945<\/a>. While we could debate each writer&#8217;s specific ranking, since I&#8217;m sure we all have particular favorites we&#8217;d like to move up the list (or in the case of certain writers, <i>down<\/i>), the choices appear fairly intelligent  for once.  I usually get angry quite quickly when skimming such lists, but in this case, my initial reaction was acceptance, rather than anger or denial.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind after I examine the complete list more fully. <\/p>\n<p>The top 10 are:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>1. Philip Larkin<br \/>\n2. George Orwell<br \/>\n3. William Golding<br \/>\n4. Ted Hughes<br \/>\n5. Doris Lessing<br \/>\n6. J. R. R. Tolkien<br \/>\n7. V. S. Naipaul<br \/>\n8. Muriel Spark<br \/>\n9. Kingsley Amis<br \/>\n10. Angela Carter<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Larkin surprised me in the &#35;1 spot.  Even though I love his poem <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artofeurope.com\/larkin\/lar2.htm\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;This Be the Verse,&#8221;<\/a> and quote it often, I hadn&#8217;t realized he was quite <i>that<\/i> highly regarded over on the other side of the pond.<\/p>\n<p>As for other writers on the list, I anticipated that Roald Dahl (&#35;16) and J. G. Ballard (&#35;27) would be there, but I&#8217;m pleasantly surprised to see that Mervyn Peake (&#35;18) and Michael Moorcock (&#35;50) made it as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Times just published its list of the men and woman who compose the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. While we could debate each writer&#8217;s specific ranking, since I&#8217;m sure we all have particular favorites we&#8217;d like to move up the list (or in the case of certain writers, down), the choices appear fairly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12413,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12412\/revisions\/12413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}