September 1, 1939. Ian Sansom

      

Copyright

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thEstate.co.uk

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019

      Copyright © Ian Sansom 2019

      Cover design by Heike Schüssler

      Cover photograph © Getty Images/Hulton Archive/Stringer

      Ian Sansom asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      Unpublished writings by W. H. Auden are quoted with the permission of the Estate of W. H. Auden.

      ‘September 1, 1939’ from Another Time by W. H. Auden (1940, Faber & Faber).

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780007557233

      Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780007557226

      Version: 2020-06-17

Dedication

      For N. J. Humphrey

      Contents

      1  Cover

      2  Title Page

      3  Copyright

      4  Dedication

      5  Contents

      6  Wow!

      7  September 1, 1939

      8 Your Least Favourite Auden Poem?

      9  Just a Title

      10  1

      11  I ≠ A

      12  The Modern Poet

      13  Not Standing

      14  A Not Insignificant Americanism

      15  A Rolling Tomato Gathers No Mayonnaise

      16  Clever-Clever

      17  Various Cosmic Thingummys

      18  Offensive Smells

      19  2

      20  A Little Spank-Spank

      21  Strangeways

      22  Is Berlin Very Wicked?

      23  Do Not Tell Other Writers to F*** Off

      24  3

      25  The Latin for the Judgin’

      26  4

      27  Aerodynamics

      28  Get Rid of the (Expletive) Braille

      29  Tower of Babel Time

      30  5

      31  The Liquid Menu

      32  Below Average

      33  Soft Furnishings

      34  6

      35  Talking Trash

      36  You Can’t Say ‘Mad’ Nijinsky

      37  7

      38  Homo Faber

      39  8

      40  As Our Great Poet Auden Said

      41  We Must Die Anyway

      42  9

      43  Twinkling

      44  A New Chapter in My Life

      45  Twenty-Five Years’ Worth of Reading

      46  Also by Ian Sansom

      47  About the Author

      48  About the Publisher

      LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

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