Review: A. S. G. Edwards, Peter Mendes, and John Stokes, Ian Fletcher, Poet and Scholar: A List of His Publications (Nottingham: Shoestring Press, 2019)

Abstract

It must have been the autumn of 1973 that I first met Ian Fletcher. Evening was coming on and we were both giving papers at a Pater or Beardsley conference in Brasenose College, Oxford. As we crossed one of the inner quadrangles on our way to the lecture theatre this tall, gaunt man bent over me, said: ‘I won’t be a minute’, and disappeared into the door which led to the college chapel. I waited a few moments and he emerged murmuring to me, ‘That should be all right then.’ It was clear that he had been consulting the ghost of Pater about his forthcoming piece and had received a blessing from the other side. He hardly needed it for as soon as he began to speak my jaw dropped in wonder at such eloquence.