Robert McCrum

Better Known

Robert McCrum discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Robert McCrum is a writer and editor whose most recent book, Shakespearean was published to great acclaim in 2021. Formerly the editor-in-chief of Faber & Faber, and literary editor of the Observer, he is also the author of Wodehouse: A Life (2004), and a classic memoir, My Year Off (1998).

From 1980 to 1996, McCrum was editor-in-chief of Faber & Faber, where he published Kazuo Ishiguro, Hanif Kureishi, Milan Kundera, Peter Carey, Danilo Kis, Paul Auster, Marilynne Robinson, Lorrie Moore, Adam Phillips, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jayne Anne Phillips, Orhan Pamuk, and Adam Mars-Jones. At the same time, he wrote seven novels, and co-authored the BBC TV series, The Story Of English, for which he was awarded an Emmy in 1986, followed by a Peabody Prize in 1987.

In July 1995, McCrum suffered a serious stroke, a personal crisis he described in My Year Off, a book now regarded as an essential study in the understanding of the condition.

He was literary editor of the Observer from 1996 to 2010. Globish (2010) was an international bestseller. In 2024, he will publish The Penalty Kick: The Story of A Game-changer with Notting Hill Editions.

1. The Lost Art of Silence by Sarah Anderson https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/animal-emotions/202312/the-art-and-power-of-connecting-to-the-sounds-of-silence

2. The River Granta https://www.wildlifebcn.org/news/river-granta-gets-wiggle

3. The invention of the penalty kick in football https://epicchq.com/story/william-mccrum-the-irish-inventor-of-the-penalty-kick/

4. Alfred the Great https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n09/tom-shippey/what-did-he-think-he-was

5. Kindness https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-enthralled-a-generation/

6. Rossini’s Petite Messe Solonelle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqrzmdevQSI

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