SOURCE: "Sansom and Delilah," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3193, May 10, 1963, p. 340.

Here, the critic comments on Sansom's wide variety of subjects and the stylistic flexibility he displays throughout his writing.

The name of William Sansom first became familiar at a time when, in the little mushroom-magazines sprouting overnight from the literary soil of World War II, the short story flourished. It was the heyday of Horizon and Penguin New Writing (in both of which Mr. Sansom's initial stories appeared): also the period of the Kafka boom, when no Bloomsbury or Chelsea bedsitter was complete without a copy of The Castle or The Trial and the Soho cafés resounded with misquotations from Kierkegaard. Shortly after, with the liberation of France, M. Sartre and Existentialism became the vogue instead (offering, as they did, not only a philosophy and a way of life in accordance with the prevalent psychological...