22 AUGUST 1987, page 27

The Patent Larkin-betjeman Verse Machine

Somewhere (round 1914) Art went wrong. Poets no longer versified for bread. They scorned to take a penny for a song. Journeyman Shakespeare sounded like a gong And countless......

The Tribulations Behind A Masterpiece

Harold Acton THE MAN ZONI FAMILY by Natalia Ginzburg, translated by Marie Evans Carcanet, £12.95 A moderately affluent member of the Milanese squirearchy when Lombardy was under......

No Respite From The Struggle

Kathy Stephen A FRIEND FROM ENGLAND by Anita Brookner Cape, £9.95 ■fr A long, sustained battle has raged throughout Anita Brookner's fiction be- tween the forces of reason,......