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The distinguished critic, reviewer and broadcaster, Professor John Carey, talks to the Sunday Times chief fiction reviewer, Peter Kemp, about his new memoir, The Unexpected Professor.  Carey describes the events that formed him – his escape from the Blitz to an idyllic rural village, army service in Egypt and an academic career that saw him elected to Oxford’s oldest English professorship at the age of 40. He portrays the snobberies and rituals of 1950s Oxford and recounts his inspiring meetings with the likes of Auden, Graves, Larkin and Heaney.

Carey is emeritus Merton Professor of English at the University of Oxford. He is well known for his provocative take on cultural issues in works such as The Intellectuals and the Masses and What Good are the Arts? He is the author of many works on English literature, including studies of Donne, Dickens and Thackeray and a guide to 20th-century literature, Pure Pleasure.  He is chief book reviewer for the Sunday Times and has been a reviewer for the paper for 40 years.