Tretower to Clyro:Essays by Karl Miller

 

This is a genial collection of essays by an esteemed critic, including a foreword by one of his friends, Andrew O’Hagan, and pieces on his friends too, including Seamus Heaney. The pieces are collected from the TLS in the main, with a couple from The Scottish Review of Books and Raritan, which is an indicator of their quality. Miller has a relaxed, confident tone, and his subject is often literature or places, or both together. These places are most often (though not exclusively) rural, and so there are mentions of authors like the Ettrick Shepherd himself, James Hogg, as well as, Robert Burns (of course), the aforementioned Seamus Heaney, and, in a piece called Yorkshire Lad, Ted Hughes. This set of essays hangs together very well, due to the author’s common preoccupations, although every individual essay has its own qualities. A common quality is clarity of expression, though this occasionally defaults into a confusing vagueness, where the author’s intent seems pure but remains unclear. This is rather rare here though, and this is in summation an enjoyable and relaxed collection, which somehow remains so even when the author looks at spikier subjects, such a Hugh Trevor Roper’s take on Scottish identity. [Nat Smith]