CONTENTS

THIS MONTH’S PULPIT is written by Kathryn Hughes, who runs the MA in Life Writing at the University of East Anglia. Her most recent book was The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton (Fourth Estate), which is available in paperback.

ALAN RYAN is Warden of New College, Oxford and the biographer of John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, and John Dewey.

ANDREW ROBERTS’s most recent book, Masters and Commanders, is published by Allen Lane.

URSULA K LE GUIN’s latest novel, Lavinia, is published this month in the UK by Orion.

FRANCIS WHEEN’s book about the Seventies, Strange Days Indeed, will be published by Fourth Estate in September.

OLEG GORDIEVSKY spent eleven years as a British secret agent inside the KGB. He was exposed in 1985 and placed under house arrest in Moscow, facing an imminent death sentence. However, with the assistance of British Intelligence, he escaped and was brought to London. He survives, somewhere in England, to tell the tale, and has written four books, three of them in partnership with Christopher Andrew.

PIERS BRENDON’s The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781–1997 is published in paperback by Vintage.

JOHN GUY’s most recent book is A Daughter’s Love: Thomas and Margaret More (Fourth Estate). Unable to resist the martyred victims of tyrants and overmighty kings, he is now writing a new biography of Thomas Becket for Viking.

BRENDA MADDOX’s books include The Half-Parent: Living with Other People’s Children.

PULPIT

HISTORY

BIOGRAPHY

HOT TOPICS

BELLES LETTRES

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KATHRYN HUGHES

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PIERS BRENDON The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars Richard Overy FRANCIS WHEEN When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies Andy Beckett OLEG GORDIEVSKY The Rise and Fall of Communism Archie Brown ANDREW ROBERTS Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History David Aaronovitch JONATHAN SUMPTION Summer of Blood: The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 Dan Jones JOHN GUY Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor Eamon Duffy Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen Anna Whitelock FELIPE FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO Spain, Europe and the Wider World, 1500–1800 J H Elliott NIKOLAI TOLSTOY Lost Londons: Change, Crime and Control in the Capital City, 1550–1660 Paul Griffiths

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ALAN RYAN The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels Tristram Hunt DIANA ATHILL The Blue Hour: A Portrait of Jean Rhys Lilian Pizzichini JONATHAN KEATES Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte Flora Fraser HUGO VICKERS Chaplin’s Girl: The Life and Loves of Virginia Cherrill Miranda Seymour BRENDA MADDOX The Lost Child: A True Story Julie Myerson

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MICHAEL BURLEIGH Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Islam, Immigration and the West Christopher Caldwell JOHN CORNWELL Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate Terry Eagleton

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PETER WASHINGTON Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism Cathy Gere ELSPETH BARKER A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx Elaine Showalter PETER MCDONALD The Verse Revolutionaries: Ezra Pound, H D and the Imagists Helen Carr ALAN BROWNJOHN The Movement Reconsidered: Essays on Larkin, Amis, Gunn, Davie and Their Contemporaries (ed) Zachary Leader RICHARD GRAY Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art Judith L Sensibar

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. 365

LITERARY REVIEW May 2009

2 MAY 2009

FOREIGN PARTS

GENERAL

FICTION

SILENCED VOICES CRIME POETRY COMPETITION LR CLASSIFIEDS LR CROSSWORD LR BOOKSHOP AUDIOBOOK

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ALLAN MASSIE Footsteps in Paris: A Few Streets, A Few Lives Gillian Tindall MICHAEL HOLMAN We Have Tomorrow: Stirrings in Africa 1959–1967 Peter Mackay JOHN KEAY A Shadow Falls: In the Heart of Java Andrew Beatty

JONATHAN DERBYSHIRE What Price Liberty? How Freedom Was Won and Is Being Lost Ben Wilson ADRIAN WEALE The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict Peter Beaumont JONATHAN MIRSKY Sweet Water and Bitter: The Ships That Stopped the Slave Trade Siân Rees RONALD HUTTON Grimoires: A History of Magic Books Owen Davies PAUL JOHNSON Eric Ravilious: Landscape, Letters & Design Anne Ullmann, Christopher Whittick & Simon Lawrence PATRICK O’CONNOR Tenor: History of a Voice John Potter FRANK MCLYNN Frankly, My Dear: ‘Gone with the Wind’ Revisited Molly Haskell

PATRICIA DUNCKER Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel SAM LEITH Brooklyn Colm Tóibín URSULA KLE GUIN The Post Office Girl Stefan Zweig PAMELA NORRIS The Children’s Book A S Byatt CRESSIDA CONNOLLY The Winter Vault Anne Michaels DJTAYLOR Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall Kazuo Ishiguro MICHELE ROBERTS The Thing Around Your Neck Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie PHILIP WOMACK The Quickening Maze Adam Foulds THOMAS MARKS ON SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS PETER SCOTT ON DEBUT NOVELS

LUCY POPESCU JESSICA MANN

SUSAN CROSLAND

JONATHAN SUMPTION is a practising QC, and the latest volume of his history of the Hundred Years War, Divided Houses, was published in February by Faber.

DIANA ATHILL is the author, most recently, of Somewhere Towards the End, which won the Costa Book Award for biography this year.

FELIPE FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO works at the University of Notre Dame. His most recent book was Amerigo (2007).

PETER WASHINGTON was Editor of the Everyman Library from 1989 to 2009

JONATHAN KEATES’s most recent book, The Siege of Venice, is published by Chatto & Windus.

MICHAEL BURLEIGH’s Blood and Rage has just been published in paperback by HarperPerennial.

ADRIAN WEALE is writing a history of the SS for Little, Brown. In 2003 he was recalled to the British Army and served as Chief of Staff for the Coalition Provisional Authority in the Iraqi province of Dhi Qar for six months.

ELSPETH BARKER is an award-winning novelist, essayist and journalist. She is also a detective.

MICHAEL HOLMAN, a former Africa editor of the Financial Times, was brought up in Gwelo, Rhodesia.

JONATHAN DERBYSHIRE is writing a book about philosophy in Britain in the 1950s.

JOHN CORNWELL’s latest book (with Michael McGhee) is Philosophers and God, published in May by Continuum.

PETER MCDONALD is Christopher Tower Student and Tutor in Poetry in the English Language at Christ Church, Oxford.

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LITERARY REVIEW May 2009