I’m over the moon that the second volume of the T S Eliot Letters, which I helped edit over 20 years ago, are published! Here’s the memoir I wrote for The Guardian’s Review section in 2005 about the experience: “Dear Mrs. Eliot….”

And here’s a review of the new volume (which is published in the UK, but not yet in the US)  that makes a good point about the new huge academic publishing venture that has grown up round the Eliot Estate.

Eliot is, beyond question, a hugely important writer and an intriguing man, but the spirit does not leap at the prospect of some 10,000 pages of elaborate politeness.

It seems as though what Mrs Eliot called the PhD industry has taken over.