“Journalism may not dare too much. It can be gently humorous and ironic, very lightly touched by idiosyncrasy, but it must not repel readers by digging too deeply. This is especially true of its approach to language: the conventions are not questioned. The questioning of linguistic conventions is one of the main duties of what we call literature.”

Non-Fiction, A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)

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English writer 1917–1993

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