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| Karl Miller, founding editor of London Review of Books, dies at 83 | |
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| Karl Miller, founding editor of the London Review of Books, critic and award-winning author, has died, aged 83. | Karl Miller, founding editor of the London Review of Books, critic and award-winning author, has died, aged 83. |
| After stints as literary editor of both the Spectator and the New Statesman, Miller co-founded the London Review of Books in 1979, editing it until 1992 and, according to an essay by his former colleague Andrew O’Hagan, once correcting the great Seamus Heaney, a long-time friend of his. | After stints as literary editor of both the Spectator and the New Statesman, Miller co-founded the London Review of Books in 1979, editing it until 1992 and, according to an essay by his former colleague Andrew O’Hagan, once correcting the great Seamus Heaney, a long-time friend of his. |
| Writing after the Nobel laureate’s death last year, O’Hagan recalled a moment during his time at the magazine when Miller was looking over a new poem of Heaney’s. “‘Seamus, I’m very grateful to you,’” said the editor to the poet down the line. ‘The problem is this. We’re delighted with the poem, but there’s a mistake in it,’” remembered O’Hagan, a friend to both men. “’The thing is, you have this thing about MacDiarmid’s ‘chattering genius’. That’s wrong. I’m from Scotland myself. You once said sheep chatter. And I can tell you Scottish sheep don’t chatter, Seamus – they blether. Surely you mean MacDiarmid’s ‘blethering genius’?’” | Writing after the Nobel laureate’s death last year, O’Hagan recalled a moment during his time at the magazine when Miller was looking over a new poem of Heaney’s. “‘Seamus, I’m very grateful to you,’” said the editor to the poet down the line. ‘The problem is this. We’re delighted with the poem, but there’s a mistake in it,’” remembered O’Hagan, a friend to both men. “’The thing is, you have this thing about MacDiarmid’s ‘chattering genius’. That’s wrong. I’m from Scotland myself. You once said sheep chatter. And I can tell you Scottish sheep don’t chatter, Seamus – they blether. Surely you mean MacDiarmid’s ‘blethering genius’?’” |
| Also a professor of modern English literature at University College London, where he ran the English department until 1992, Miller was the author of a number of books, winning the James Tait Black Memorial award for Cockburn’s Millennium, a biography of the Scottish judge and writer Henry Cockburn. His own literary output also includes two memoirs, Rebecca’s Vest and Dark Horses, the latter containing his experiences of literary journalism; Doubles, a study of the double as it appears in literature; and Tretower to Clyro, a book of essays about writers. | Also a professor of modern English literature at University College London, where he ran the English department until 1992, Miller was the author of a number of books, winning the James Tait Black Memorial award for Cockburn’s Millennium, a biography of the Scottish judge and writer Henry Cockburn. His own literary output also includes two memoirs, Rebecca’s Vest and Dark Horses, the latter containing his experiences of literary journalism; Doubles, a study of the double as it appears in literature; and Tretower to Clyro, a book of essays about writers. |
| Reviewing the latter in the Guardian, Margaret Drabble wrote of how “Miller ... is fond of salting his prose with authentic Scottish vernacular, both demotic and archaic, with words like nae and braw and auld and lug and cowp and gomeril”, and of how “these sprinklings remind us and him of his origins, from which he has strayed so far, entrenching himself in voluntary exile for nearly the whole of his adult life in a highly pressurised and very urban literary London”. | Reviewing the latter in the Guardian, Margaret Drabble wrote of how “Miller ... is fond of salting his prose with authentic Scottish vernacular, both demotic and archaic, with words like nae and braw and auld and lug and cowp and gomeril”, and of how “these sprinklings remind us and him of his origins, from which he has strayed so far, entrenching himself in voluntary exile for nearly the whole of his adult life in a highly pressurised and very urban literary London”. |
| His life of James Hogg, Electric Shepherd, won him glowing reviews. It is not, however, wrote Nicholas Lezard in the Guardian, “a book for the faint-hearted, or those with a short attention span”, adding that Miller “has the air of the aunt in PG Wodehouse whose native nickname translates back into English as ‘she upon whom it is unsafe to try any oompus-boompus’.” | His life of James Hogg, Electric Shepherd, won him glowing reviews. It is not, however, wrote Nicholas Lezard in the Guardian, “a book for the faint-hearted, or those with a short attention span”, adding that Miller “has the air of the aunt in PG Wodehouse whose native nickname translates back into English as ‘she upon whom it is unsafe to try any oompus-boompus’.” |
| O’Hagan told the Guardian: “He was the leading literary figure of his generation and the funniest man I’ve ever known. He changed the picture for nearly five decades of writers and readers, editing and founding the best magazines, promoting voices that people were unlikely to have heard before. He championed VS Naipaul and Seamus Heaney, Frank Kermode and Angela Carter. Not only did he give writers places in which to write, but he gave them subjects, he sharpened their style, and he pushed them to be braver than they were before. If Karl liked you, you felt you had passed the ultimate exam.” | O’Hagan told the Guardian: “He was the leading literary figure of his generation and the funniest man I’ve ever known. He changed the picture for nearly five decades of writers and readers, editing and founding the best magazines, promoting voices that people were unlikely to have heard before. He championed VS Naipaul and Seamus Heaney, Frank Kermode and Angela Carter. Not only did he give writers places in which to write, but he gave them subjects, he sharpened their style, and he pushed them to be braver than they were before. If Karl liked you, you felt you had passed the ultimate exam.” |
| He added that Miller was “perhaps the last of the great Bloomsbury men ... Of course, there are brilliant writers and editors now, but they live in a world where the squeeze on literary values and on books programmes, on high culture and carefulness, is fearsome and degrading. Karl Miller worked in spite of the market, and he enriched the intellectual life of the country in a thousand ways.” | He added that Miller was “perhaps the last of the great Bloomsbury men ... Of course, there are brilliant writers and editors now, but they live in a world where the squeeze on literary values and on books programmes, on high culture and carefulness, is fearsome and degrading. Karl Miller worked in spite of the market, and he enriched the intellectual life of the country in a thousand ways.” |
| But, he said, “it’s the laughs I’ll miss. It’s hard to believe that ‘Karl’s comic engine’, as Clive James called it, has now stopped. He was king of the aperçu, laird of the upbraiding one-liner. I was looking forward this week to telling him about the No Campaign’s betrayal of the Scots. ‘You’ve got your Braveheart face on,’ he would say. ‘You’ve been hiding it for a while. Tell me some stories. Keep on speaking ‘til I tell you to stop.’” | But, he said, “it’s the laughs I’ll miss. It’s hard to believe that ‘Karl’s comic engine’, as Clive James called it, has now stopped. He was king of the aperçu, laird of the upbraiding one-liner. I was looking forward this week to telling him about the No Campaign’s betrayal of the Scots. ‘You’ve got your Braveheart face on,’ he would say. ‘You’ve been hiding it for a while. Tell me some stories. Keep on speaking ‘til I tell you to stop.’” |
| At his publisher, Quercus, editor-in-chief Jon Riley said today: “I don’t think I ever left Karl’s presence without feeling that he had, even when old, ill and tired, made the day better through his wit, kindness and incomparable intelligence about writing and writers. His books are a testament to all that, and much more.” | At his publisher, Quercus, editor-in-chief Jon Riley said today: “I don’t think I ever left Karl’s presence without feeling that he had, even when old, ill and tired, made the day better through his wit, kindness and incomparable intelligence about writing and writers. His books are a testament to all that, and much more.” |