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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Each week we choose some of our favourite pieces

from the magazine

and ask their writers to read them aloud. I'm Patrick Gibbons and on this week's podcast.

Following the death of a sibling, Ian Thompson reflects on his childhood home. Andrew Watts

argues that MPs fill a unique position, accountable for everything yet responsible for little.

As his new book, The Haunted Wood, A History of Childhood Reading, is published this week. Sam Leith reveals the surprising

problem of poetical copyright. Reviewing Will Noble's book Croydonopolis, a journey to the

greatest city that never was, Helen Barrett explores the reputation of a place with unfulfilled potential,

and, from Provence, Catriona Olding ponders the idea of moving on from loss to love.

Up first, Ian Thompson.

My sister died last summer, before her time, at 58.

Her death has left me shaken with sorrow and remorse we did not always get on.

The other day I accompanied her daughters and husband to scatter her ashes on the Thames at Greenwich

in South London where she and I had grown up. The great muddy waterway would take Claire's ashes out to sea eventually.

People like Liz Trust live in Greenwich now, but in my time the inhabitants were Labour-voting bohemian types.

Daniel Day Lewis, a brashish schoolboy, lived down the road from us on Crum's Hill with

his poet father Cecil. At Greenwich Theatre opposite, Max Wall performed his anarcho-comic piano sketches

on Friday nights. Claire Tomlin was a near neighbour, as was later Jonathan Sumpchin. In those days,

...