The Horizon Conquerors: Post-war London through Colonial Eyes.

Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul both arrived in London a few years after the end of the Second World War. This paper looks at their perceptions of the city as 'colonials', as seen from their fiction and non-fiction writings

The Uses of Adversity: Matthew Flinders' Mauritius Writings

A discussion of Matthew Flinders' 'Biographical Tribute to the Memory of Trim' and of an extended journal entry, both written while he was detained on Mauritius

Good Versus Evil in Austen’s Mansfield Park and Iris Murdoch’s A Fairly Honourable Defeat

The character of Tallis Browne in Iris Murdoch's novel 'A Fairly Honourable Defeat' is characterised by her as a figure of good, taking the place of Christ in a post-Christian allegory. This article compares Murdoch's exploration of theological themes with the ethical world created in Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park'. Various possibilities for theological schemes in 'Mansfield Park' are discussed, and the characters analysed and compared to Murdoch's characters in 'A Fairly Honourable Defeat'. It is established, by examining point of view and voice in both novels, that, while Tallis is the moral centre of Murdoch's novel, Fanny is far from embodying the implied morality of the author of Mansfield Park, whose world view is more worldly and sophisticated than Fanny Price's

Fiji: Republican Rome in the Pacific?

Review of 'Fiji: Paradise in Pieces' by Satendra Nandan

Alien and Adrift: The Diasporic Consciousness in V.S. Naipaul’s 'Half a Life' and J.M. Coetzee's 'Youth'

This article as also published in 'The Regenerative Spirit' ed. Nena Bierbaum, Syd Harrex and Sue Hosking. Adelaide: Lythrum Press, 2003, 118-125.In this paper, I look at some similarities in sensibility of Naipaul and Coetzee, one clearly a diasporic writer and the other less identifiably so, as expressed in these two recent books. I discuss to what extent their differences in literal diasporic status are significant in forming the consciousness of these two writers and their characters, none of whom seem to owe any allegience to a group, a race, a class or a nation

Naipaul's Women.

V.S. Naipaul's three novels of the 1970s (In a Free State, Guerrillas and A Bend in the River) earned him a reputation as a misogynist. The only sustained critical examination of women in his fiction came in the late seventies and eighties as a reaction to these novels. In this paper I attempt a survey of female characters in Naipaul's fiction across his whole career to establish to what extent this reputation is justified, and whether his harsh treatment of some female characters is matched by equally critical attitudes to male characters. While early conditioning has given Naipaul a traditional view of women’s roles, he cannot be said to show a consistent dislike of women, as his female characters range from the admirable to the repugnant in the same way as his male characters do. Much of the misogyny identified by critics is, on closer examination, attributable to characters rather than Naipaul himself

The Post-War Novel in Crisis: Three Perspectives

Three major novelists of the period following the second world war, Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul, have pondered the question of why the post-war novel is unable to achieve the heights of its nineteenth-century predecessors. Each of these three writers has suggested remedies, to which they have aspired with varying degrees of success. And each of them offers, implicitly or explicitly, different reasons for the change. In this essay I will evaluate their arguments and attempt to account for some of the factors which give rise to the consciousness that they are different in some qualitative way from their predecessors. I will also discuss the effect such attitudes may have on their own work

Those Difficult Years

Review essay of 'Letters Between and Father and Son' and 'Reading and Writing: A Personal Account' by V.S. Naipaul. The letters of the Naipaul family are compared with the fictional version of events in 'A House for Mr Biswas'

'When Tired of Writing, I apply to Music': Music in Matthew Flinders' Life

An examination of music in the life and writings of Matthew Flinders, against the background of the place of music in the navy of the times