Carcanet 2000: Commonplace Book

On Saturday, 15 June 1996, a bomb unmade Carcanet, along with the comfortable, "en pantoufles" old Mancheester it inhabited. Since then, Carcanet and the city have taken a different shape. Conceived in 1969 in modest undergraduate digs in South Hinksey, Oxford, Carcanet was born in 1970 as an inventive, quixotic and resourceful publishing house. It is now thirty years old and to mark the occasion, a number of writers, book-sellers, agents and others were invited to contribute poems or prose to a little celebratory book. Contributions include James Atlas, Paul Bailey, Louis de Bernieres, William Boyd, Matthew Evans, Elizabeth Jennings, Frank Raphael, Gillian Reynolds, Alan Ross, Charles Simic and Auberon Waugh, as well as several Carcanet authors.