CONTENTS

THIS MONTH’S PULPIT is written by John Gross. His most recent work, The Oxford Book of Parodies, is published this month by Oxford University Press.

GEOFFREY WALL’s books include Flaubert: A Life, published in paperback by Faber in 2001.

JOHN GRAY’s latest book, Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings, is published in paperback by Penguin.

MICHAEL TANNER is a philosopher at Cambridge University. He is the Opera Critic of The Spectator, and his most recent book is The Faber Guide to Wagner.

MIRANDA SEYMOUR is the author of A Brief History of Thyme, and Other Herbs. Her most recent book, Chaplin’s Girl: The Life and Loves of Virginia Cherrill, is published in paperback this month by Pocket Books.

RICHARD OVERY’s The Morbid Age: Britain Between t he Wars and his 1939: Countdown to War were both published last year by Allen Lane.

WILLIAM ST CLAIR is the author of The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, and other works. With Peter France he edited Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography.

RODERICK MATTHEWS is the author of The Flaws in the Jewel: Challenging the Myths of British India (HarperCollins), available in India from May.

CHRISTOPHER COKER is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and author of several books on international security.

JULIAN THOMPSON is a retired Major General and visiting professor at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. His recent publicat ions include Dunkirk, Retreat t o Victory, and Forgotten Voices of Burma.

LITERARY REVIEW May 2010

PULPIT

HISTORY

WAR & AID

BIOGRAPHY

PAKISTAN

SECOND WORLD WAR

ROMANTICS

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JOHN GROSS

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ADRIAN TINNISWOOD The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain Allan Massie LEANDA DE LISLE Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley, and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart Chris Skidmore RICHARD CARWARDINE Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 Gordon S Wood SARAH BRADFORD Courtiers: The Secret History of Kensington Palace Lucy Worsley LESLIE MITCHELL When London was Capital of America Julie Flavell DOMINIC SANDBROOK No Turning Back: The Peacetime Revolutions of Post-War Britain Paul Addison RICHARD OVERY The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A Personal History of the Cold War Norman Stone

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ADRIAN WEALE The Good Soldiers David Finkel Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the SAS and the Secret War in Iraq Mark Urban CAROLINE MOOREHEAD War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times Linda Polman

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GEOFFREY WALL A Winter on the Nile: Florence Nightingale, Gustave Flaubert and the Temptations of Egypt Anthony Sattin BRYAN APPLEYARD The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness Oren Harman JUDY TAYLOR HOUGH So Much to Tell Valerie Grove Puffin by Design: 70 Years of Imagination – 1940–2010 Phil Baines ALEXANDER WAUGH The Sultan of Zanzibar: The Bizarre World and Spectacular Hoaxes of Horace de Vere Cole Martyn Downer

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RODERICK MATTHEWS Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence Jaswant Singh NADIRA NAIPAUL Songs of Blood and Sword Fatima Bhutto

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CHRISTOPHER COKER Moral Combat: A History of World War II Michael Burleigh JULIAN THOMPSON Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 – The Epic Story of the Last Great Stand of Empire Fergal Keane KEITH LOWE The Battle of Britain James Holland Listening to Britain Paul Addison & Jeremy A Crang

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WILLIAM ST CLAIR Joseph Severn, A Life Sue Brown CATHERINE PETERS Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives Daisy Hay

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. 376

2 MAY 2010

MUSIC & FILM

FOREIGN PARTS

EXTRACT

GENERAL

FICTION

CRIME POETRY SILENCED VOICES LR CROSSWORD

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MICHAEL TANNER Music and Sentiment Charles Rosen LEO ROBSON A Room and a Half Dir: Andrey Khrzhanovskiy DANIEL MATLIN Jazz Gary Giddins & Scott DeVeaux Duke Ellington’s America Harvey G Cohen CHRISTOPHER BRAY Clint: A Retrospective Richard Schickel

MICHAEL HOLMAN The Last Resort: A Zimbabwe Memoir Douglas Rogers JONATHAN RANDAL Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East David Hirst MIRANDA FRANCE Andes Michael Jacobs

ZACHARY MASON The Lost Books of the Odyssey

JOHN GRAY Ill Fares the Land: A Treatise on Our Present Discontents Tony Judt JEREMY WARNER The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Michael Lewis JOHN STUBBS Shakespeare, Sex, and Love Stanley Wells JOHN MARTIN ROBINSON Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles Robert Sackville-West MIRANDA SEYMOUR Gardening Women: Their Stories 1600 to the Present Catherine Horwood STEPHEN AMIDON Manhood for Amateurs Michael Chabon SIMON HEFFER Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language Robert McCrum DAVID PROFUMO At the Loch of the Green Corrie Andrew Greig TOM FORT Blood Knots: Of Fathers, Friendship & Fishing Luke Jennings

TIM MARTIN The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of his Friend Marilyn Monroe Andrew O’Hagan PATRICIA DUNCKER Desert J M G Le Clézio S IMON BAKER The Dead Republic Roddy Doyle JANE CHARTERIS Burley Cross Postbox Theft Nicola Barker ADRIAN TURPIN The Stars in the Bright Sky Alan Warner OPHELIA FIELD Private Life Jane Smiley LESLEY DOWNER The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet David Mitchell

JESSICA MANN

LUCY POPESCU LR CLASSIFIEDS 64 LR BOOKSHOP 6

LESLIE MITCHELL is Emeritus Fellow of University College, Oxford. His publications include a study of the Whig Party entitled The Whig World.

SARAH BRADFORD is writing a book about Queen Victoria.

BRYAN APPLEYARD writes on everything for The Sunday Times and is writing a book about everything.

RICHARD CARWARDINE FBA is president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

ADRIAN WEALE governed Dhi Qar province in Iraq in the second half of 2003. His next book, The SS: A New History, is published by Little, Brown this autumn.

KEITH LOWE is the author of Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943 (Viking).

CATHERINE PETERS’s short biography of Dickens has recently been reissued by The History Press.

JOHN STUBBS is the author of a biography of John Dunne, The Reformed Soul (Penguin, 2006), and is currently writing a book on seventeenth-century writers and the civil wars.

MICHAEL HOLMAN i s a f o rmer 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.

NADIRA NAIPAUL worked as a special correspondent and columnist for The Nation and The Frontier Post for twelve years. She now lives in Wiltshire and is married to V S Naipaul.

ALEXANDER WAUGH is working on a p r o j e c t t o s a ve au t hors f r om exploitation by the Internet.

DAVID PROFUMO is fishing columnist for Country Life.

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LITERARY REVIEW May 2010