a) Ian McEwan is a British writer who, according to many critics, has written some of the best novels of recent years.
b) Born in 1948, he spent much of his childhood abroad as his father was an army officer.
c) He studied English literature and creative writing at the universities of Sussex and East Anglia.
d) He has written a number of successful collections of short stories and novels.
e) His novel The Child In Time won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1987.
f) His later novels, including Amsterdam, Atonement and Saturday, have been very successful.
g) Amsterdam received the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1998.
h) Atonement and Saturday has also won literary prizes.
i) However, McEwan has always been a controversial writer.
j) Some writers accused him of stealing details in Atonement from the work of another author, Lucilla Andrews in an author's note in the.
k) However, he pointed out the acknowledgement made to Lucilla Andrews is an author's note in the book.
l) During this contoversy, the American author Thomas Pynchon wrote a defence of McEwan in a British newspaper.
THE AGEING POPULATION
The number of men and women in the US aged 60 or over still in work has been rising for more than a decade. Economists have given a number of reasons for this trend. First, since 1985 the US economy has been expanding, so there has been an increased demand for labour. At the same time, the cost of some services, such as health care, has been increasing so workers need to earn more money in later life. In addition, changes in social benefits and rules have had a considerable effect on labour patterns. First, in 1977 and 1983 changes to the Social Security raised the full benefit age from 65 to 67 and introduced other changes that make delaying retirement more attractive. Then, in 1986 the Age Discirimination Act ended compulsory retirement for all workers, allowing them to work later in life. Changes to pension laws have also encouraged workers to stay in employment longer, as this gives them more chance of a larger pension when they retire.
