Philip Hensher

Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Exeter, Philip Hensher was among Granta 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. The author of six novels, a collection of short stories and an opera libretto, he has won numerous prizes including the Somerset Maugham Award and the Stonewall Journalist of the Year. A regular presence in the British media, alongside his Wednesday column for The Independent, he writes for The Spectator and Mail on Sunday. His latest novel, The Northern Clemency, is published by Fourth Estate.

Philip Hensher: Anonymity protects too many critics

Amazon know your real name. Why do they allow their reviewers to post under pseudonyms anyway?

Recently by Philip Hensher

Philip Hensher: A class act always appeals

Friday, 16 April 2010

The Week In Culture

Philp Hensher: A few more ruins is just what we need

Thursday, 15 April 2010

David Cameron launched his party's manifesto at Battersea Power Station the other day. The implication was that the vast, decaying bulk of the famous building was an example of the sort of neglect and abandonment which his government would put right.

Philip Hensher: Let's start counting the cost of health

Monday, 5 April 2010

Since I was 14, I've used an inhaler for an ongoing but not generally serious medical condition. It gets renewed every month or two; I think nothing of it. Last week, for the first time, I just didn't have time to go to my NHS doctor to order a repeat prescription.

Philip Hensher: Greatness that I didn't even have to pay for

Monday, 29 March 2010

It was a noble gesture to make this marvellous Kobke exhibition free

Philip Hensher: Why Austen would never win the Booker

Monday, 22 March 2010

The ambitious novel with a regard for humour is not dead, but is beleaguered

Philip Hensher: Silence can be golden in our critical world

Monday, 15 March 2010

Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical, Love Never Dies, a sequel to Phantom of the Opera, opened in London last week. The original Phantom opened in 1986, and since then an enormous phenomenon has transformed our lives: the internet. In 1986, strange to say, if you wanted to find out what a theatre production was like, you read a critic's view, or you called a theatre-going friend and asked what he thought about it.

Philip Hensher: Why don't we put animals on trial?

Monday, 8 March 2010

The Swiss love a referendum – there's always some poster in the streets advising you whether to vote for or against some occasionally bizarre proposition. A few months ago it was whether to allow minarets to be built. Yesterday, it was on the question of whether to allow animals to have their own legal representation in court.