John Walsh was born in Wimbledon to Irish parents in 1953, and was educated at Exeter College, Oxford and University College, Dublin. In 1987, after reviewing books for years, he became literary editor of the Evening Standard, and from 1988-1992 was literary editor and feature writer at the Sunday Times. In 1993, he joined the Independent as editor of the magazine, and spent the next 20 years as Assistant Editor in a variety of roles, writing features, reviewing restaurants and interviewing famous people, from Dame Ninette de Valois to Ozzy Osbourne. In 1996, he chaired the judging panel of the Forward Poetry Prize. From 1997 to 1999, he was editorial director of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. From 1998 to 2015, he could be heard, alongside Sebastian Faulks and James Walton, on the popular Radio 4 book quiz show, The Write Stuff. He has written The Falling Angels: an Irish Romance (1999), Are You Talking To Me? A Life in the Movies (2003) and Sunday at the Cross Bones (2007), a novel about the Rector of Stiffkey. John is married to Angie O'Rourke, has three grown-up children, Sophie, Max and Clementine, and lives in London and West Sussex.
[An] elegant and elegiac memoir . . . the vigour of the book's
attack and the hilarity of its anecdotage ... [shows he was] one of
the great power-brokers of literary London . . . He was (and is) a
good thing and I salute him.
*Literary Review*
Very funny . . . I laughed long at the set-piece lunch with
[Martin] Amis
*Observer*
Walsh's enthusiasm for the writing of the 1980s is infectious
*Irish Times*
This is by no means just a book of literary history, fascinating
though much of that is. Walsh also gives us plenty of terrific
stories/gossip from those far-off days when newspaper offices were
full of typewriter noise and cigarette smoke, and the choice of
lunchtime drinks was definitely not restricted to still or
sparkling.
*Reader's Digest*
Through it all, Walsh was there. First as an eager wannabe, then as
a full-blooded insider. Any disappointment that his own efforts at
a novel didn't prove a ticket to the dream-circus was quickly
mitigated once he discovered his potential as a critic, commentator
and general facilitator, swishing through the forest as
interviewer, literary judge, pundit, speaker, partygoer par
excellence . . . An immersive literary history . . . highly
readable
*Financial Times*
Reading John Walsh's adventures in the literary world of the 1980s
is like donning a pair of spectacles that bring blurred memories
into sudden, sharp focus . . . Walsh describes people, events and
places with such accuracy that he will transport oldies back to the
era, allowing them to reappraise and appreciate it afresh. His
memory - even if dependent on a diary - is prodigious, and his
anecdotes polished till they sparkle.
*The Oldie*
An entertainingly gossipy memoir of the period . . .
*The Week*
Elegant and entertaining
*Critic*
[There's a] mixture of high and low, sacred and profane, running
through Walsh's account of literary London in the 1980s that makes
it such a joy
*Sunday Times*
Walsh's appetite for celebrity gossip is supplemented by a keen
understanding of the business moves behind the invention of these
literary stars, while his candour about his own shortcomings is
endearing . . . [this] memoir is highly recommended
*Irish Examiner*
Walsh makes London seem like the place to have been. The stage was
smaller; everything burned more brightly; more angels teemed on the
head of a pin . . . One of the best things about Circus of Dreams
is Walsh's memories not of the big beasts of literature, but of the
smaller players - the editors and agents and clubmen and hacks and
P.R. people, the various legends in their own lunchtimes.
*New York Times*
John Walsh's Circus of Dreams sent me reeling nostalgically back to
the literary 1980s, where I may remain happily trapped for some
time to come
*HEAD TOPICS*
Alternately fascinating and provocative
*TLS*
Circus of Dreams, the critic and journalist John Walsh's
rambunctious and hugely entertaining history of the British
literary scene in the 1980s, summons up something of the
excitement, and the absurdity, of the period
*Spectator World*
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