Andrew Motion

While Motion's prose is flawless, the disconcerted and often rambling nature of his narrative makes this book tedious to finish. Nonetheless, "The New World" succeeds in igniting a nostalgia for the original "Treasure Island" in the hearts and minds of its readers and if a book's success can be measured by the emotions it invokes- then "The New World" is that type of novel which truly opens the door to another realm.

Other than his narrative, Motion succeeds in entrancing his readers and building upon Stevenson's original work. Well worth a read if you hunger after simpler times where friend and foe fought side by side on the high-seas and crossed paths with the denizens of the New World in the American hinterlands.… (more)

As I have said before, I think a great biography profoundly changes one's perspective. John Keats has been my favourite poet since I was a high school students, but I actually knew almost nothing about him. This great biography by Andrew Motion has changed that profoundly. It was a five-star read to me.

Most of the Romantic poets were too young to witness the French Revolution; that event was much more impressive to the generation of Mary Wollstonecraft, who went to Paris to see how the revolution unfolded. However, the revolutionary spirit had a long echo in the ideas of the Romantic poets, including John Keats, and this biography shows how that formed the young Keats.

The biography is an impressive description of the momentuous events Keats life and his family, and friends. His life and illness can only be described as tragic, up until the moving moments of his early death in Rome.… (more)