Thank you for everything, Tony Harrison. I wish I’d said it sooner.

Congratulations, @audenfan! 🎉🥳🎊

The Island: W.H. Auden and the Last of Englishness has been shortlisted for the 2025 James Tait Black Award for biography.

@emsilk10 @Harvard_Press

"Look, stranger, at this island now" — these are the opening words of one of #Auden's greatest poems from the 1930s. The "island of strangers" speech by @Keir_Starmer today shows how uncannily Auden's work articulates a deep and lasting ambivalence in the nation's psyche. 1/2

This is, as one theorist wrote, the "desire for isolation, the knowledge that it is impossible – these are the two poles between which the needle of the British compass continues to waver." Auden's poetry continues to be alive to "this island now." 2/2 amzn.eu/d/7PW2mRq

Thanks to @FaberBooks for sending me this beauty

I’m a little obsessed by the 1930s gang that ran that show

This is a cracking read. Mary Jo Salter on Nicholas Jenkins on Auden: thesewaneereview.com/articles/poet-…

"Nonetheless, 'The Island' is as demanding and rewarding as Auden’s poetry itself."

@JamesChappel considers @audenfan's study of the early Auden:
commonwealmagazine.org/haunted-home

W.H. Auden was a poet whose entire conception of his calling was bound up with his Englishness. hedgehogreview.com/issues/in-need…

‘The larger story of the book is Auden coming to realize that Englishness had to be shaken off before he could become what he was destined to be: a major poet.’

Seamus Perry on how W. H. Auden was shaped by the idea of England
the-tls.co.uk/literature/lit…

Nicholas Jenkins’s stunning new book THE ISLAND, about the poet W. H. Auden’s early life and work, includes a fresh look at Auden’s relationship with Isherwood.

Our Book of the Week is 'a Copernican Revolution in Auden Studies': Nicholas Jenkins's groundbreaking reassessment of W.H. Auden's early life, THE ISLAND: W.H. AUDEN AND THE LAST OF ENGLISHNESS, just out from @FaberBooks

Find out more here: lrb.me/cr3

Reviewed a hugely impressive new book on early Auden spectator.co.uk/article/can-w-…

Can W.H. Auden be called a war poet? spectator.co.uk/article/can-w-…

The Island: WH Auden and the Last of Englishness review – a deep dive into the poet’s early years theguardian.com/books/article/…

Congratulations to Nicholas Jenkins on this majestic, much-anticipated achievement.

Delighted to find this, by ⁦@audenfan⁩, waiting in the doorstep. Excited to read it, too.

Warm congratulations to Nicholas Jenkins @audenfan - a foremost scholar of W. H. Auden - on this publication.

Publication day in the US for The Island. Thank you, @Harvard_Press I started writing the book because I loved Auden's poetry. By the time I finished, my feelings had deepened. He said it best: "the poet fetches / The images out that hurt and connect." a.co/d/gcHPZTR