will there ever be a great writer again..has there really been anybody since Charles Dickens ...does anybody write great social commentary any more? Why don't Save the Children or the NSPCC sponsor writers instead of advertisers?

[zippitippitoes]

....we still have issues but no one can write about them and produce great literature why not?

As I said before Zippi - there isn't one, because there are many!

And in my mind social commentary and weightiness don't always correspond!

I think Alison Pearson and 'I don't know how she does it' will in time be seen as a social commentary on a particular type of female at a particular time in the development of work/life balance.

I think books like the diary of an internet blind dater (or whatever it is called)chronicles another aspect of life for women in this century. All light and fluffy stuff, but no less socially relevant.

The fat, moral, highly complex 19th century novel was very much the genre of its time. There is no single playwright doing what Shakespeare did either, neither was there one working at the same time as Dickens.

Playwrights - I think Brian Friel does it for Ireland, something of the same national treasure status and covering a huge amount in each play. Dickens, after all, like George Eliot, usually (? [sweats]) wrote at least officially about the past - 20 or 30 years before publication date? Friel does too in the plays I've seen. Though perhaps I've seen his more popular plays, which are the ones about the past?... don't know.

Tom Stoppard's plays encompass an incredible amount in a single work. I would say Patrick Marber but his work is more like a microscope I would say - focusing intensely on some very uncomfortable amoebas. But social commentary nonetheless.

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The American novelist Barbara Kingsolver writes beautiful novels that are full of social commentary, albeit usually from an American perspective. 'The Poisonwood Bible' is a brilliant overview of colonialism and its aftermath in the Congo, 'Prodigal Summer', which I'm reading at the moment, is full of scientific detail about organic farming and diversity of species. 'Animal Dreams' has a secondary narrative about America's covert attacks upon the socialist government in Nicaragua. She educates without sacrificing narrative or character. Hasn't had any fiction published since 2001 though; I'm hoping there'll be something new soon.