THIS MONTH’S PULPIT is written by D J Taylor, a novelist and biographer. His last novel, Ask Alice, will be published in paperback in the spring. A new novel, At the Chime of a City Clock, is out in March.

JOHN GRAY’s most recent book is Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings (Allen Lane).

BRYAN APPLEYARD writes for The Sunday Times, blogs and is working on a book which he cannot yet explain.

ELAINE SHOWALTER is Professor Emerita of English at Princeton University. Her latest book is A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (Little, Brown).

FREDERIC RAPHAEL is finishing a novel called Final Demands (the third in his The Glittering Prizes trilogy), to be published in the spring.

TOM HOLLAND is the author of Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic. He is currently writing a history of late antiquity and the coming of Islam.

DOUGLAS MURRAY is an author and the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion.

JOHN SUTHERLAND is the Lord Northcliffe Professor of English Emeritus at UCL. His bibliomemoir, Magic Moments, was published by Profile Books in 2008.

TOM PAULIN’s version of Medea opens at the Oxford Playhouse in February.

ANDREW ROBERTS’s latest book is The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Allen Lane).

RICHARD OVERY’s The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars was published in May and his 1939: Countdown to War was published in August, both by Allen Lane.

CAROLYNE LARRINGTON is a Tutor in medieval English at St John’s College, Oxford, where she also teaches Old Norse. Her latest book is King Arthur’s Enchantresses, published by IB Tauris.

CONTENTS

PULPIT

GLOBAL WARNINGS

LITERARY LIVES

EXTRACT

HISTORY

BIOGRAPHY & LETTERS

ANCIENT WORLD

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

1

DJTAYLOR

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5 7

9

BRYAN APPLEYARD Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto Stewart Brand JOHN GRAY In Defence of the Enlightenment Tzvetan Todorov DAVID CESARANI Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity Daniel Jonah Goldhagen DOUGLAS MURRAY The Cartoons that Shook the World Jytte Klausen

11

13 14 16

17

19

FREDERIC RAPHAEL How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer Sarah Bakewell ELAINE SHOWALTER Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor Brad Gooch JOHN SUTHERLAND Cheever: A Life Blake Bailey TOM PAULIN The English Opium Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey Robert Morrison ANDREW LYCETT The Devil is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley Phil Baker MIRANDA FRANCE Small Memories: A Memoir José Saramago

20

WILLIAM STYRON ‘Elobey, Annobón, and Corisco’

21

22 24

25 26

ANDREW ROBERTS England’s Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy 1940–1942 Colin Smith PAUL ADDISON Family Britain, 1951–1957 David Kynaston RICHARD OVERY The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 Christopher Andrew JONATHAN BECKMAN The Queen’s Necklace Antal Szerb CAROLYNE LARRINGTON The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of the Vikings Robert Ferguson

28

30 31 32

34

PAUL JOHNSON Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: The Official Biography William Shawcross DOMINIC SANDBROOK The Clinton Tapes Taylor Branch DIARMAID MACCULLOCH Augustine of Hippo Henry Chadwick MICHAEL GLOVER Vincent van Gogh: The Letters (Edd) Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten & Nienke Bakker RICHARD DAVENPORT-HINES The Letters of T S Eliot, Volume Two: 1923–1925 (Edd) Valerie Eliot & Hugh Haughton

36

38 39

TOM HOLLAND The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy Adrienne Mayor PETER JONES Ancient Greece: A History in Eleven Cities Paul Cartledge CHRISTOPHER HART On the Spartacus Road Peter Stothard

40 42

JEREMY LEWIS ON A SELECTION OF TALES FROM LITERARY LIFE DAVID PROFUMO The Untranslatables C J Moore

Editor: NANCY SLADEK Deputy Editor: TOM FLEMING Editor-at-Large: JEREMY LEWIS Assistant Editor: JONATHAN BECKMAN

Contributing Editors: MICHAEL BURLEIGH, SARA WHEELER,

SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE, PHILIP WOMACK

Advertising Manager: TERRY FINNEGAN Classified Advertising: DAVID STURGE

Founding Editor: DR ANNE SMITH Founding Father: AUBERON WAUGH

Cover illustration by Chris Riddell

Issue no. 372

LITERARY REVIEW Dec 09 / Jan 10

2 FOREIGN PARTS

SEX

CINEMA

INTERVIEW

GENERAL

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

FICTION

LR CROSSWORD CRIME SILENCED VOICES POETRY COMPETITION

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47 49

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60

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65 66 68 69 70 71 71 72

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DECEMBER 2009 / JANUARY 2010

DAVID PRYCE-JONES The Arabs: A History Eugene Rogan JAY PARINI Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression Morris Dickstein PAUL BEW Crown and Shamrock: Love and Hate Between Ireland and the British Monarchy Mary Kenny GILLIAN TINDALL The Great Cities in History (Ed) John Julius Norwich ALLAN MASSIE Kipling Abroad: Traffics and Discoveries from Burma to Brazil (Ed) Andrew Lycett DIANA QUICK Black and White Sands Elma Napier

SARA WHEELER Manhood: The Rise and Fall of the Penis Mels van Driel TOM FLEMING ON THE BAD SEX IN FICTION AWARDS

JONATHAN DERBYSHIRE Disgrace (Dir) Steve Jacobs

KATHRYN HUGHES TALKS TO HILARY MANTEL

A C GRAYLING The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World Iain McGilchrist FRANCIS WHEEN On Rumours: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Belive Them, What Can Be Done Cass R Sunstein ALEX GOODALL The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books that Shaped the Cold War John V Fleming SIMON HEFFER Getting Our Way: 500 Years of Adventure and Intrigue – The Inside Story of British Diplomacy Christopher Meyer JONATHAN MIRSKY Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting John Maxwell Hamilton JOHN GRIBBIN Uranium Wars: The Scientific Rivalry that Created the Nuclear Age Amir D Aczel

PHILIP WOMACK

ELSPETH BARKER Collected Stories William Trevor DAVID LODGE The Original of Laura Vladimir Nabokov MICHAEL JACOBS Nazi Literature in the Americas Roberto Bolaño SARAH A SMITH The Museum of Innocence Orhan Pamuk TIM MARTIN Chronic City Jonathan Lethem SIMON BAKER The Legend of Liz and Joe John Murray MICHAEL ARDITTI Chaos Edmund White BELINDA JACK Normance Céline

JESSICA MANN LUCY POPESCU LR BOOKSHOP 18 CHRISTMAS SUBSCRIPTION OFFER 77

DAVID LODGE is a novelist and critic, and Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham. His most recent novels are Author, Author and Deaf Sentence.

A C GRAYLING’s latest book is To Set Prometheus Free (Oberon Books), published last month.

DAVID PRYCE-JONES’s most recent book, Safe Houses, is published by Sinclair-Stevenson. He is Senior Editor of National Review.

DIARMAID MACCULLOCH is Fellow of St Cross College and Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. His latest book is A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Allen Lane).

SARA WHEELER’s latest book is The Magnetic North (Jonathan Cape).

FRANCIS WHEEN’s most recent book is Strange Days Indeed (Fourth Estate).

JAY PARINI, a poet and novelist, is author of The Last Station, a novel about Tolstoy’s life, which will be released as a film in February, starring Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, and James McAvoy.

DAVID CESARANI’s latest book, Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1945-1948, is published by Heinemann.

JOHN GRIBBIN is the author of Science: A History (Penguin).

PAUL ADDISON’s book No Turning Back: The Peacetime Revolutions of Post-War Britain will be published by OUP in April.

ALLAN MASSIE is writing a book about the ghost of Vichy.

PHILIP WOMACK’s second novel for children, The Liberators, will be published by Bloomsbury in February.

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LITERARY REVIEW Dec 09 / Jan 10