CONTENTS

THIS MONTH’S PULPIT is written by Alexander Waugh. He is completing a film script based on his recent book, The House of Wittgenstein, for exploitation by Canadian cinema moguls. www.alexanderwaugh.com

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

DAVID WOOTTON teaches at the University of York. He has just completed a biography of Galileo.

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.

MICHAEL BURLEIGH’s Blood & Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism is available in paperback from HarperPerennial.

JOHN KEAY’s most recent book, China: A History, is published by HarperPress.

BLAIR WORDEN is Research Professor of History at Royal Holloway College London.

MICHAEL SLATER’s biography of Dickens was published last month by Yale University Press.

CHARLES ESDAILE is Professor in History at the University of Liverpool and the author of numerous books on Napoleon’s wars.

ANDREA WULF’s The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession is published by Windmill/Random House.

RICHARD CARWARDINE FBA is Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University and Presidentelect of Corpus Christi College.

PULPIT

FOREIGN PARTS

HISTORY

BIOGRAPHY

LETTERS & MEMOIRS

THE GEORGIANS

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ALEXANDER WAUGH

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MICHAEL BURLEIGH Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia Robert Lacey JOHN KEAY Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India William Dalrymple HAZHIR TEIMOURIAN The Persians: Ancient, Medieval and Modern Iran Homa Katouzian Shah Abbas: The Ruthless King Who Became an Iranian Legend David Blow

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10 12 14

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JONATHAN SUMPTION Conquest: The English Kingdom in France, 1417–1450 Juliet Barker BLAIR WORDEN 1688: The First Modern Revolution Steve Pincus RICHARD CARWARDINE The American Civil War John Keegan CHARLES ESDAILE Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814 Dominic Lieven RICHARD OVERY Demobbed: Coming Home After World War Two Alan Allport

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JOHN GRAY Trotsky: A Biography Robert Service DAVID WOOTTON Boyle: Between God and Science Michael Hunter MICHAEL SLATER The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian Andrew Stott JESSIE CHILDS The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn Alison Weir BRENDA MADDOX The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World Shelley Emling Remarkable Creatures Tracy Chevalier NICHOLAS RANKIN Papa Spy: Love, Faith and Betrayal in Wartime Spain Jimmy Burns MICHAEL FARR Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin Pierre Assouline

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DAVID KYNASTON Dear Mr Bigelow: A Transatlantic Friendship Frances Woodsford ELSPETH BARKER My Father’s Places Aeronwy Thomas ROBERT CHESSHYRE My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times – An Autobiography Harold Evans J W M THOMPSON Climbing the Bookshelves: The Autobiography Shirley Williams

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LESLIE MITCHELL Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England Amanda Vickery NORMA CLARKE The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital Dan Cruickshank

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. 370

LITERARY REVIEW October 2009

2 OCTOBER 2009

GARDENS

BELLES LETTRES

THE ARCTIC

GENERAL

FICTION

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

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CHARLES ELLIOTT Paradise of Exiles: The Anglo-American Gardens of Florence Katie Campbell ANDREA WULF Great Gardens of America Tim Richardson

HUGH HAUGHTON The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Volume I (Edd) Peter Brooker & Andrew Thacker RICHARD GRAY A New Literary History of America (Edd) Greil Marcus & Werner Sollors

FERGUS FLEMING The Magnetic North Sara Wheeler ROLAND HUNTFORD Arctic Labyrinth: The Quest for the Northwest Passage Glyn Williams

ALLISTER HEATH The Constant Economy Zac Goldsmith JOHN CORNWELL The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution Richard Dawkins DAVID PROFUMO To Sea and Back: The Heroic Life of the Atlantic Salmon Richard Shelton EDWARD NORMAN A History of Christianity Diarmaid MacCulloch ANTHONY BURTON Blood,Iron & Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World Christian Wolmar M R D FOOT The Making of the British Army Allan Mallinson CHRISTOPHER BRAY The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger Chris Fujiwara Ingmar Bergman: The Life and Films of the Last Great European Director Geoffrey Macnab PHILIP WOMACK What on Earth is Going on? A Crash Course in Current Affairs Tom Baird and Arthur House

ELAINE SHOWALTER A Gate at the Stairs Lorrie Moore CAROLINE MOOREHEAD The Dogs and the Wolves Irène Némirovsky TIM MARTIN Lustrum Robert Harris JONATHAN BARNES Juliet, Naked Nick Hornby TOBY LICHTIG Last Night in Twisted River John Irving ADRIAN TURPIN Transition Iain Banks SUZI FEAY Her Fearful Symmetry Audrey Niffenegger

LUCY POPESCU ON J S TISSAINAYAGAM JESSICA MANN

RICHARD OVERY’s The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars was published in May and his 1939: Countdown to War was published in August, both by Allen Lane.

LESLIE MITCHELL is Emeritus Fellow of University College, Oxford.

JESSIE CHILDS’s Henry VIII’s Last Victim is available in paperback from Vintage.

DAVID PROFUMO is Chairman of the Atlantic Salmon Conservation Trust (Scotland), and is the fishing columnist for Country Life magazine.

BRENDA MADDOX is writing Reading the Rocks, a group biography of Victorian geologists, for The Bodley Head.

NORMA CLARKE is Professor of English Literature at Kingston University and author of Queen of the Wits: A Life of Laetitia Pilkington (Faber).

DAVID KYNASTON’s Family Britain 1951–57 is due to be published by Bloomsbury in November.

HUGH HAUGHTON is the co-editor (with Valerie Eliot) of Volume II of The Letters of T S Eliot, out next month.

ROBERT CHESSHYRE was on the staff of The Observer throughout Harold Evans’s editorship of The Sunday Times.

ANTHONY BURTON’s books include The Railway Builders, The Railway Empire, On the Rails and a biography of Richard Trevithick.

MICHAEL FARR is the author of The Adventures of Hergé and Tintin: The Complete Companion, both published by John Murray.

NICHOLAS RANKIN’s latest book, Churchill’s Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914–1945, is out in paperback from Faber.

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LITERARY REVIEW October 2009