CONTENTS

THIS MONTH’S PULPIT is written by Carole Angier. She is a biographer of Jean Rhys and Primo Levi. She is currently co-writing with Sally Cline The Arvon Book of Life Writing.

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

RICHARD OVERY’s The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars was published last month by Allen Lane. 1939: Countdown to War will be published in August.

CAROLINE MOOREHEAD’s Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution was published in March by Chatto & Windus.

PAUL ADDISON is an Honorary Fellow of the School of History and Classics at the University of Edinburgh. His most recent book is Churchill: The Unexpected Hero (OUP).

HUGH HAUGHTON is the author of The Poetry of Derek Mahon (OUP, 2007) and co-editor (with Valerie Eliot) of Volume II of The Letters of T S Eliot (to be published later this year). He teaches English at the University of York.

BEN WILSON’s What Price Liberty? was published last month by Faber.

GILLIAN TINDALL’s Footprints in Paris was published last month by Chatto & Windus.

JESSICA MANN, with Charles Thomas, is the author of Godrevy Light (Twelveheads Press), an illustrated history of the iconic lighthouse in St Ives Bay that inspired many Cornish painters, and writers such as Virginia Woolf.

ANDREW LAMBERT is the author of Nelson: Britannia’s God of War, and Admirals; his new book, Franklin: Tragic Hero of Polar Navigation, is published next month by Faber.

PULPIT

BIOGRAPHY

LETTERS

HISTORY

LITERARY LIVES

FOREIGN PARTS

1

CAROLE ANGIER

4 5

7

9

PAUL ADDISON Harold Macmillan Charles Williams JONATHAN MIRSKY The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China Jay Taylor FRANK MCLYNN High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood Donald Spoto PAUL JOHNSON Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2001–2004 (Ed) Lawrence Goldman

10

12

JOHN GRAY Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960 Isaiah Berlin (Edd) Henry Hardy & Jennifer Holmes HUGH HAUGHTON The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1929–1940 (Edd) Martha Dow Fehsenfeld & Lois More Overbeck

14

16 17

19

20

RICHARD OVERY Stalin’s Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky Bertrand M Patenaude SIMON HEFFER D-Day: The Battle for Normandy Antony Beevor DAVID STAFFORD 1938: Hitler’s Gamble Giles MacDonogh CHRISTOPHER KELLY Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe Peter Heather LESLIE MITCHELL Pistols at Dawn: Two Hundred Years of Political Rivalry from Pitt & Fox to Blair & Brown John Campbell

22

23 24

26

27

CLAIRE HARMAN Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment William McCarthy CATHERINE PETERS Eminent Lives: George Eliot Brenda Maddox PHILIP DAVIS Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing Stephen J Zipperstein P J KAVANAGH Dreaming of Babylon: The Life and Times of Ralph Hodgson John Harding ION TREWIN Max Reinhardt: A Life in Publishing Judith Adamson

29

30

31

32 34

ADOLF WOOD South Africa’s Brave New World R W Johnson After Mandela Alec Russell A Legacy of Liberation Mark Gevisser MARY KILLEN From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island Lorna Goodison The Dead Yard: Tales of Modern Jamaica Ian Thomson PETER JONES The Empire Stops Here: A Journey Along the Frontiers of the Roman World Philip Parker JOHN KEAY Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity Sam Miller THOMAS WIDE Out of Steppe: The Lost Peoples of Central Asia Daniel Metcalfe

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

Contributing Editors: 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. 366

LITERARY REVIEW June 2009

2 JUNE 2009

GENERAL

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

FICTION

SILENCED VOICES CRIME POETRY COMPETITION LR CLASSIFIEDS LR CROSSWORD LR BOOKSHOP

3 5

36 38

39

41 42

43

45 46

47

48

50 51 52 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60 62 64 63 18

CAROLINE MOOREHEAD The Junior Officers’ Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars Patrick Hennessey BEN WILSON The Life and Death of Democracy John Keane EDWARD NORMAN God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge ANDREW LAMBERT Men of War: The Changing Face of Heroism in the 19th Century Navy David Crane STEPHEN HALLIDAY Bugs and the Victorians J F M Clark JOHN MCEWEN Sleuth: The Amazing Quest for Lost Art Treasures Philip Mould STEPHEN AMIDON Closing Time: A Memoir Joe Queenan When Skateboards Will Be Free Saïd Sayrafiezadeh CHRISTOPHER HART On Roads: A Hidden History Joe Moran HARRY MOUNT Lived in London: Blue Plaques and the Stories Behind Them (Ed) Emily Cole TIM RICE Ashes to Ashes: 35 Years of Humiliation (and About 20 Minutes of Ecstasy) Watching England v Australia Marcus Berkmann

PHILIP WOMACK Gullstruck Island Frances Hardinge The Ask and the Answer Patrick Ness Season of Secrets Sally Nicholls The Well Between the Worlds Sam Llewellyn Feather and Bone Lazlo Strangolov The Immortals Chris Riddell & Paul Stewart

GILLIAN TINDALL Hodd Adam Thorpe ELSPETH BARKER Lavinia Ursula K Le Guin SUZI FEAY The Little Stranger Sarah Waters ADRIAN TURPIN Nobody Move Denis Johnson JULIAN PREECE Alone in Berlin Hans Fallada JOANNA KAVENNA How to Paint a Dead Man Sarah Hall BEAU HOPKINS Hearts and Minds Amanda Craig SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE Turbulence Giles Foden RASHEED EL-ENANY Friendly Fire Alaa Al Aswany CHARLOTTE APPLEYARD Intuition Allegra Goodman

LUCY POPESCU JESSICA MANN

LESLIE MITCHELL is Emeritus Fellow of University College, Oxford. His most recent publications include a life of Maurice Bowra and a study of the Whig Party entitled The Whig World.

CHRISTOPHER KELLY is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His latest book, Attila the Hun: Barbarian Terror and the Fall of Rome, was published by The Bodley Head last year.

CLAIRE HARMAN’s most recent book is Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World (Canongate).

ADOLF WOOD was born in 1928 in Krugersdorp, near Johannesburg. From 1975 to 2002 he was Senior Editor at The Times Literary Supplement.

PHILIP DAVIS is the author of Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life (OUP, 2007) and most recently, Why Victorian Literature Still Matters (Blackwell, 2008) He is also editor of The Reader magazine.

CATHERINE PETERS’s short life of Dickens will be reissued by the History Press next month.

HARRY MOUNT is the author of A Lust for Window Sills: A Lover’s Guide to British Buildings from Portcullis to Pebble-Dash.

DAVID STAFFORD’s most recent book is Endgame: Victory, Retribution, Liberation (Abacus, 2008).

RASHEED EL-ENANY is Professor of Modern Arabic Literature at the University of Exeter.

ION TREWIN was Literary Editor of The Times in the 1970s before crossing over to publishing. At Weidenfeld & Nicolson he edited three volumes of the diaries of Alan Clark. His biography of Clark will be published in September.

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 RRGR-ASHK-BTSL, Unit 14, 1-11 Willow Lane, Mitcham CR4 4NA Tel: 020 8687 3840 Fax: 020 8687 3841.

UK Subscription Rate £32, Europe £39, rest of the world air mail only £54 (US$104) USA Airspeed subscription price is £39 (US$75) per annum. Periodical pre-paid at Champlain NY (USPS 004218). All advertising enquiries to: Terry Finnegan, Literary Review, 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW Tel: 020 7437 9392 Printed by Broglia Press, Enterprise House, 52 Holton Road, Holton Heath Trading Park, Poole, Dorset BH16 6LQ Tel: 01202 621 621 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 Tel: 020 8986 4854

www.literaryreview.co.uk subscription enquiries: theliteraryreview@warnes.co.uk email: editorial@literaryreview.co.uk

3

LITERARY REVIEW June 2009