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Greatest British Writers Since 1945

The Times recently announced their list of 50 greatest British writers since 1945. I'm putting the list here to check how many I've read, heard of, or have their books lying around but not read.

Key:

Read: In Bold
Heard of: In Italic
Own their books, but unread: In Red

1. Philip Larkin

2. George Orwell

3. William Golding

4. Ted Hughes

5. Doris Lessing

6. J. R. R. Tolkien

7. V. S. Naipaul

8. Muriel Spark

9. Kingsley Amis

10. Angela Carter

11. C. S. Lewis

12. Iris Murdoch

13. Salman Rusdie

14. Ian Fleming

15. Jan Morris

16. Roald Dahl

17. Anthony Burgess

18. Mervyn Peake

19. Martin Amis

20. Anthony Powell

21. Alan Sillitoe

22. John Le Carré

23. Penelope Fitzgerald

24. Philippa Pearce

25. Barbara Pym

26. Beryl Bainbridge

27. J. G. Ballard

28. Alan Garner

29. Alasdair Gray

30. John Fowles

31. Derek Walcott

32. Kazuo Ishiguro

33. Anita Brookner

34. A. S. Byatt

35. Ian McEwan

36. Geoffrey Hill

37. Hanif Kureshi

38. Iain Banks

39. George Mackay Brown

40. A. J. P. Taylor

41. Isaiah Berlin

42. J. K. Rowling

43. Philip Pullman

44. Julian Barnes

45. Colin Thubron

46. Bruce Chatwin

47. Alice Oswald

48. Benjamin Zephaniah

49. Rosemary Sutcliff

50. Michael Moorcock

Man. There are HUGE holes in my reading, woolly mammoths could fall in them. I have read only fourteen of these authors and another six left unread!

*feels ashamed*
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Comments

  1. bibliobibuli10/1/08 7:32 pm

    one very important thing is knowing where the gaps are! lists like this are good because they make you a lot more aware.

    and if i've read a lot more of them than you it's because 1) i am british so have been conscious of these writers 2) i've knocked around planet earth for very much longer than you have

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