SOURCE: Williams, Hugo. “Freelance.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5193 (11 October 2003): 16.

In the following essay, Williams defends Hamilton against recent critics of his decades-long prominence in the world of literary criticism.

Somebody was bound to rise to the bait, and I suppose it might as well be me, biased as I am. In the current issue of the poetry magazine PN Review, the Editor, Michael Schmidt, levels various insults at the late Ian Hamilton, which he somehow forgot to level during Hamilton's lifetime. Schmidt uses a long-ago review by Donald Davie of Hamilton's first prose book, A Poetry Chronicle (1974), as his blunt instrument. He trots out Davie's description, from all those years ago, of Ian as “grudging”, “narrow”, “impatient” and “hasty”, qualities which, according to Davie, Hamilton's friends wrongly identified as “exacting”, “rigorous”, “fearless” and “urgent”. You bet we did. Ian was the Seven Samurai come to help the villagers...