London Review of Books

volume 31 number 8 30 april 2009 £3.20 us and canada $4.95

3 Colin Burrow

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

4 Letters

Abraham Foxman, Louis Harovitz, Lesley Beaven, Aldo Agosti, Alfio Bernabei, Gabriel Kahn, Robin Blake, Kate Soper, Mark Dow, Garth Clarke, Loren Biggs, Roger Mallion

6 Jeremy Harding

11 Neal Ascherson

Sharia Finance: The Money that Prays

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell

14 James Wood

On Ian McEwan

15 Daniel Kane

17 Frank Kermode

Poems: ‘Two Ornithology Variations’, ‘Albatross Slaughter’

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen, Vol. IX: Later Manuscripts edited by Janet Todd and Linda Bree Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman

18 Thomas Jones

19 Terry Eagleton

Short Cuts

What Price Liberty? How Freedom Was Won and Is Being Lost by Ben Wilson

20 Jenny Diski

Back to School

22 Hugh Wilford

The Most Noble Adventure: The Marshall Plan and the Reconstruction of Postwar Europe by Greg Behrman Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower by Nicolaus Mills

24 Tom Nairn

Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500-2000 by Colin Kidd

25 Alexander Murray The Crisis of the 12th Century: Power, Lordship and the Origins of European Government

by Thomas Bisson

27 Anne Carson

28 Tim Parks

29 Peter Campbell

31 Daniel Finn

Poem: ‘Wildly Constant’

Guiseppe Mazzini and the Globalisation of Democratic Nationalism 1830-1920 edited by C.A. Bayly and Eugenio Biagini

At the New Whitechapel

Diary

editor: Mary-Kay Wilmers deputy editor: Jean McNicol senior editors: Paul Myerscough, Adam Shatz, Daniel Soar assistant editor: Deborah Friedell editorial assistant: Joanna Biggs editorial consultant: Henry Day research: Lidija Haas editorial intern: Hannah Davies contributing editors: Jeremy Harding, Thomas Jones, John Lanchester, Andrew O’Hagan consulting editor: John Sturrock

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The LRB is looking for an editorial intern. The job, which will involve fact-checking and other less glamorous duties, would suit a recent graduate and is paid. CVs should be sent to jobs@lrb.co.uk.

In the next issue: Gareth Peirce on torture; Sheila Fitzpatrick on Prokofiev (he was a Christian Scientist); and Jenny Turner on thrift.

Neal Ascherson’s latest book is Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland. He was the Observer correspondent in Bonn from 1963 to 1968.

Colin Burrow is a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford and the editor of the Penguin Metaphysical Poetry.

Anne Carson is currently residing at an installation called The Library of Water built by the artist Roni Horn in Stykkishólmur, Iceland.

Jenny Diski’s non-fiction book, The Sixties, is coming out in July.

Terry Eagleton is, among other things, professor of cultural theory at the Nation al University of Ireland, Galway. His latest book is Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflect ions on the God Debate.

Daniel Finn, a journalist, lives in Dublin.

Jeremy Harding is a contributing editor at the LRB. He will write about the Islamic Square Mile in the next issue.

Daniel Kane’s collection Ostentation of Pea cocks is coming out in November from Egg Box Publishing.

Frank Kermode lives in Cambridge.

Alexander Murray is an emeritus fellow of University College, Oxford. The Violent against Themselves came out in paperback last August. It is volume one – three are planned – of Suicide in the Middle Ages. Volume two will go into paperback this year but he is still huffing and puffing over volume three.

Tom Nairn was teaching earlier this year at Durham University’s Institute for Advanced Study but has now returned to Melbourne and the RMIT University’s Globalism Centre.

Tim Parks’s novels include Tongues of Flame, Loving Roger, Europa, Rapids and, most recent ly, Dreams of Rivers and Seas. A translation of Machia velli’s The Prince will be published in July.

Hugh Wilford teaches history at California State University, Long Beach. The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America came out last year.

James Wood’s most recent book is How Fiction Works. He is a staff writer at the New Yorker. He spoke about Ian McEwan in Cam bridge last year.

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The London Review of Books (ISSN 0260-9592), Vol. 31, No. 8 (US No. 668), 24 times a year. The journal is published with assistance from the Arts Council.

2 london review of books 30 april 2009