Here I am, sitting at my table with my pad, the usual table at the usual hotel in Barbados. It’s mid-morning now, pigeons hopping about in the sun, little birds with yellow chests settling on the rim of my fruit punch, in front of me the sea in Caribbean blue and green, and from it the occasional …
Wish You Were Here
Various Contributors
’My plan is to sit here and get down some thoughts and memories of Alan.’
40 years of Granta

The Silkworms
Nothing to see here!

Peace Shall Destroy Many
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?

Blue Sky Days
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?

Vladimir in Love
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?

The Transition
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know? What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?
Simon Gray
Simon Gray was born in 1936. He began his writing career with Colmain, the first of five novels published by Faber. He is the author of many plays for TV and radio and films, including After Pilkington, which won the Prix Italia, and the Emmy Award-winning Unnatural Pursuits. He wrote more than thirty stage plays, among them Butley and Otherwise Engaged, which both received Evening Standard Awards for Best Play, and The Late Middle Classes, winner of the Barclay's Best Play Award. His plays Little Nell and Missing Dates were both broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and The Last Cigarette, which he adapted with Hugh Whitemore from The Smoking Diaries, premiered in March 2009. In 1991 he was the BAFTA Writer of the Year. His acclaimed works of non-fiction include An Unnatural Pursuit, How's That for Telling 'Em, Fat Lady? and, published by Granta, Fat Chance, Enter a Fox, The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer and The Last Cigarette. He was appointed CBE in the 2005 New Year's Honours for his services to drama and literature. Simon Gray died in August 2008.
More about the author →Caroline Crampton
Caroline Crampton is a writer and editor who contributes regularly to the Guardian, the Mail on Sunday and the New Humanist. She has appeared as a broadcaster on Newsnight, Sky News and BBC Radio 4.
More about the author →Josepth Roth
More about the author →Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit is author of, among other books, Call Them By Their True Names, The Mother of All Questions, Men Explain Things to Me, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, the NBCC award-winning River of Shadows and A Paradise Built in Hell. A contributing editor to Harper's, she writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times. She lives in San Francisco.
More about the author →