'Since Byron and Landor, no Englishman appears to have profited much from living abroad.' So said an American who rightly believed himself to be profiting from living abroad, T.S. Eliot in England in 1918, honouring the American who had likewise profited and who had then become - as Eliot would - an Englishman: Henry James. 'The fact of being everywhere a foreigner was probably an assistance to his native wit.'

LRB 22 May 1980 | PDF Download