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Andrew O’Hagan

The Atlantic Ocean

Hay Festival 2008, Saturday 31 May 2008

Andrew O’Hagan makes an argument for the personal essay as the great British form of writing, a form that once described the world back to itself in the eras of William Hazlitt and George Orwell. More argumentative than film, more risky than the novel, can the essay tell us how the culture of British life has become enslaved to the commercial and military dreams of America?