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CONTENTS
THIS MONTH’S PULPIT is written by Frances Wilson. Her most recent book is The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth (Faber & Faber). She is a judge of this year’s Man Booker Prize.
JOHN GRAY’s latest book, Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings, is published in paperback by Penguin.
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).
ALAN RYAN was until 2009 Warden of New College, Oxford. He is now Senior Research Fellow in Political Theory.
PIERS BRENDON is the author of The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s (Jonathan Cape).
CATHERINE MERRIDALE is Professor of Contemporary History at Queen Mary, University of London. She is currently preparing a major new cultural history of the Moscow Kremlin.
DAVID CESARANI’s latest book, Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War Against Jewish Terrorism 1945–1948, was a finalist for the 2009 US National Jewish Book Award for history.
JOHN GRIBBIN teaches the course ‘Our Place in the Universe’ at Sussex University, and is the author of In Search of the Multiverse (Allen Lane).
JAY PARINI is a poet and novelist who teaches at Middlebury College, Vermont. The Last Station, his novel about the last days of Leo Tolstoy, was recently published by Canongate and made into a film.
DONALD SASSOON is the author of The Culture of the Europeans (2006) and Professor of Comparative European History at Queen Mary, University of London.
PULPIT
FOREIGN PARTS
LITERARY LIVES
GOD, GOLD & GIRLS
BIOGRAPHY
SECOND WORLD WAR
TROUBLEMAKERS
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FRANCES WILSON
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MICHAEL BURLEIGH Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes Victoria Clark CATHERINE MERRIDALE Molotov’s Magic Lantern: A Journey in Russian History Rachel Polonsky JONATHAN MIRSKY Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip Peter Hessler ROBERT LACEY Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City Greg Grandin ANTHONY DANIELS Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness Tracy Kidder
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ELAINE SHOWALTER Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck’s Life in China Hilary Spurling DONALD RAYFIELD Brief Lives: Alexander Pushkin Robert Chandler CAROLINE MOOREHEAD The Life of Irène Némirovsky: 1903–1942 Olivier Philipponnat & Patrick Lienhardt
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JOHN GRAY Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents Ian Buruma ALAN RYAN The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism Joyce Appleby JOAN SMITH Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism Natasha Walter The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Women & Men Today Kat Banyard
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DAVID PRYCE-JONES The Woman Who Shot Mussolini Frances Stonor Saunders ALEX GOODALL Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right Jennifer Burns ROBERT CHESSHYRE Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits Linda Gordon PATRICK O’CONNOR The Last Bohemians: The Two Roberts – Colquhoun and MacBryde Roger Bristow
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DAVID CESARANI Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World Jeffrey Herf JEREMY LEWIS Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II Ben Macintyre ALLAN MASSIE The Forgotten Highlander Alistair Urquhart RALEIGH TREVELYAN Where the Hell Have You Been? Tom Carver
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JASON GOODWIN Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century Mediterranean Adrian Tinniswood DONALD SASSOON The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents Alex Butterworth
LITERARY REVIEW March 2010
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. 374
2 MARCH 2010
HISTORY
LETTER FROM COLOMBIA
MEMOIRS
GENERAL
EXHIBITION
FICTION
CRIME POETRY SILENCED VOICES LR COMPETITION LR CROSSWORD
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PIERS BRENDON The Thirties: An Intimate History Juliet Gardiner PAUL CARTLEDGE Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization Richard Miles WILLIAM DOYLE The Unseen Terror: The French Revolution in the Provinces Richard Ballard TIMOTHY BROOK 1492: The Year Our World Began Felipe Fernández-Armesto MARY KENNY The Rising – Ireland: Easter 1916 Fearghal McGarry
MICHAEL JACOBS
MICHAEL HOLMAN Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir Ngugi wa Thiong’o JWM THOMPSON Did You Really Shoot the Television? A Family Fable Max Hastings
KENAN MALIK What Darwin Got Wrong Jerry Fodor & Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini JONATHAN BECKMAN Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones & Jewellery Marcia Pointon JOHN GRIBBIN The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe? Paul Davies TOM FORT Eating Animals Jonathan Safran Foer JOHN SUTHERLAND The Oxford Companion to the Book (Ed) Michael F Suarez, S J & H R Woudhuysen
GILLIAN TINDALL Lost London (Kenwood House 23 January – 5 April) Lost London: 1870–1945 Philip Davies
JOHN DUGDALE Point Omega Don DeLillo PAMELA NORRIS Trespass Rose Tremain JAY PARINI Parrot and Olivier in America Peter Carey SARAH A SMITH The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge Patricia Duncker SUSAN HILL At the Chime of a City Clock D J Taylor S IMON BAKER Cold Snap Francis King LINDY BURLEIGH ON FIRST NOVELS KATE SAUNDERS So Much For That Lionel Shriver
JESSICA MANN
LUCY POPESCU
LR CLASSIFIEDS 64 LR BOOKSHOP 12
MICHAEL BURLEIGH’s most recent book is Blood & Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism. His latest project is a history of US responses to global insurgency from 1948 to 1968.
DAVID PRYCE-JONES’s most recent book, Safe Houses, is published by Sinclair-Stevenson. He is Senior Editor of National Review.
JOAN SMITH has a website under the name of Political Blonde. It can be found at www.politicalblonde.com
PAUL CARTLEDGE is the A G Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University and an honorary citizen of (modern) Sparta.
ROBERT LACEY is the author of Ford: The Men and the Machine (1986). His latest book is Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia (Hutchinson).
SUSAN HILL’s The Shadows in the Street, the fifth book in her Simon Serrailler crime novel series, is published in April by Chatto & Windus.
DONALD RAYFIELD is Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary, University of London. The third, expanded edition The Literature of Georgia: A History has just been published by the Garnett Press.
MARY KENNY’s most recent book is Crown and Shamrock: Love and Hate between Ireland and the British Monarchy.
MICHAEL HOLMAN is a former Africa editor of the Financial Times. Dizzy Worms, the third novel in his satirical trilogy set in east Africa, will be published by Polygon in June.
GILLIAN TINDALL’s The Fields Beneath: The History of One London Village was first published in 1977. Her latest book is Footprints in Paris (Chatto & Windus).
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LITERARY REVIEW March 2010