I’ve long been intimidated, though I’ve never read any of her writing, by Rebecca West. This intimidation, I suspect, is because I know that I’ll read her thousand page plus masterpiece Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, but am nervous of the scale of the task. I am delighted to come across a less daunting progression for newbies to West,’ which feels like a plan.

Somehow I’ll weave this plan into my parallel plans to read all Kafka, a lot more Duras, all Nabokov and Bellow.