News at Eleven: 'The great and the good' is the kind

of thing we get rather too much of in [Simon] Armitage: he will slide in an ironic modernism when he can. [Bernard] O'Donoghue's 'in style: not a care in the world' is not quite so trendy, but is still fitted on like a prefabricated part. (And although he has forsworn alliteration he does have 'leading lords'.) Is either of these an improvement on Tolkien?

from London Review of Books: Who has the gall?

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