I finally got round to Thoreau's Journal. It is determinedly down-to-earth and soaring, lyrical and belligerent, humane and cantankerous. Walt Whitman thought Thoreau suffered from a very aggravated case of superciliousness, but as Walt also said (of himself) the Journal of this brooding, solitary figure is great; it contains multitudes. I've also been reading Xiaolou Guo's My Battle of Hastings. Having moved to Britain and switched to writing in English, the Chinese writer and film-maker