The best British short stories — from Daniel Defoe to Zadie Smith

Philip Hensher, the thinking man’s Stephen Fry — novelist, critic, boisterously clever — begins his introduction to his two-volume anthology of the British short story with typical gusto. ‘The British short story is probably the richest, most varied and most historically extensive national tradition anywhere in the world.’ Take that, ye upstart Americans, with your dirty realism and your New Yorker swank! Read it and weep, ye Johnny-come-latelys! Look to your laurels, Chekhov and Carver. Jorge Luis Who? Maupassant? Bof!

And there’s more — much much more. In a short introduction of just 35 pages Hensher sets out his stall, settles some old scores and convincingly establishes himself as a world authority on the subject of the short story, even though these days his own books — The Northern Clemency, The Emperor Waltz — tend to be vast baggy monsters with grand state-of-the-nation ambitions. (Though it’s worth remembering that way back last century A.S.