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Editor Nancy Sladek Deputy Editor Tom Fleming Editor-at-Large Jeremy Lewis Senior Editor Jonathan Beckman Chief Editorial Assistant Frank Brinkley Editorial Assistants Tom Williams • David Gelber Contributing Editors Michael Burleigh Sara Wheeler • Philip Womack Advertising Manager Terry Finnegan Classified Advertising David Sturge Founding Father Auberon Waugh Cover Illustration Chris Riddell

The Literary Review, incorporating Quarto, is published monthly from: 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • Tel: 020 7437 9392 Fax: 020 7734 1844 • ISSN 0144 4360 © All subscription enquiries and changes of address to: Literary Review Subscriptions, FREEPOST RSJB-SUGY-ZKRA, Impakt MMD Ltd, 3-4 Pylon Way, Croydon CR0 4XX • Tel: 020 8683 7151 All advertising enquiries to: Terry Finnegan, Literary Review, 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • Tel: 020 7437 9392 Printed in the United Kingdom by: Henry Ling Ltd, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester DT1 1HD • Tel: 01305 251 066 Distributed to newsagents worldwide by: COMAG Specialist, Tavistock Works, Tavistock Rd, West Drayton, Middlesex, UB7 7QX • Tel: 01895 433 800 Distributed to bookshops by: Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN • Tel: 020 8986 4854 Subscriptions: theliteraryreview@warnes.co.uk Editorial: editorial@literaryreview.co.uk www.literaryreview.co.uk • @lit_review Designed by Cog Design. Literary Review is set in Adobe Caslon and Janet. The latter is a digitisation of an engraved typeface designed by the artist and typographer Reynolds Stone, and named after his wife.

Literary Review | j u l y 2 0 1 2 2

f r om the p u l p i t 1 Robert Macfarlane h i st or y 5 Robert Bickers

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, & the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War Stephen Platt 6 Michael Burleigh

The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume 4: The Passage of Power Robert A Caro 8 Paul Addison

Mr Churchill ’s Profession: Statesman, Writer, Orator Peter Clarke 9 David Cesarani

Letters to Hitler (Ed) Henrik Eberle 11 Peter Marshall

The Late Medieval English Church G W Bernard 12 Edward Vallance

The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed a Revolution Frank McLynn 13 Max Egremont

As They Really Were: The Citizens of Alnwick 1831 Keith Middlemas l i t e r a r y l i v e s 14 David Collard

The Letters of T S Eliot, Volume 3: 1926–1927 (Edd) Valerie Eliot & John Haffenden 16 Jeremy Lewis

Stephen Spender: New Selected Journals 1939–1995 (Edd) Lara Feigel & John Sutherland 18 Catherine Peters

The Dickens Dictionary John Sutherland • Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’ Robert L Patten • Charles Dickens’s Networks Jonathan H Grossman the f or g o t t e n mr f i r b a n k 20 Richard Canning f or e i g n pa rts 22 John Keay

Behind the Beautiful Forevers Katherine Boo • India Rising Oliver Balch • Following Fish Samanth Subramanian 23 Joanna Kavenna

Names for the Sea: Stangers in Iceland Sarah Moss 24 Richard Cockett

Pakistan on the Brink Ahmed Rashid