Always good for a bit of controversy

[chickenfeet2003]

The Thunderer has produced one of those lists.  This time it's the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.  Of course it's total pants and I could have done far better etc.

Comments

[chickenfeet2003]

Only indirectly. It did rather imply it was designed to wind us up.

[chickenfeet2003]

I don't know that i would even attempt a group as wide and nebulous as writers. 50 top novelists I can get my head around. If I were to attempt the impossible;

1. Novelists and poets would be rated for technical skill (style, characterisation etc) and impact on literature.

2. 'Recreational' non fiction for style and ability to generate interest in chosen subject matter. F'rex I've enjoyed Mr/Ms Morris on subjects as diverse as Everest, The British Empire and Welsh Nationalism.

3. 'Serious' non fiction writers would be rated on prose style and ability to convey important ideas to a lay audience.

I've no idea how to compare between the classes or how to score someone who is notable in two or more of the classes (Orwell or Ackroyd for example) with someone who is/was only active in one domain (or whose ventures into another domain were pretty awful, eg Thompson who I rate highly as a historian and polemecist but whose novel "The Sykaos Papers" is pretty awful.)

[gillo]

It took me three goes to get a usable comment space. Oh LJ, how we love thee.

It took me a while to grasp that this was an order of priority.
Ian Fleming at 14? Weird. Are they "most influential" or "best quality" or "most likely to last"?

Of children's writers I'd rate Diana Wynne Jones, Peter Dickinson and Susan Cooper well above Rowling and probably even above Garner, some of whose books are decidedly creaky on re-reading. But undoubtedly media hype is an important component of the list-making philosophy, and they have less than JKR. ::sigh::