For People Who Devour Books

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August 2017

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‘This magazine is flush with tight, smart writing.’
Washington Post

Literary Review covers the most important and interesting books published each month, from history and biography to fiction and travel. The magazine was founded in 1979 and is based in London.

August 2017, Issue 456 John Gray on horse racing and human knowledge * Robin Simon on the racy Gainsborough * Richard Cockett on southeast Asia's ills * Felipe Fernández-Armesto on feeding the empire * Darrin McMahon on 18th-century celebrity * Tracy Borman on witches * Joanna Kavenna on the Essay * Cressida Connolly on Nicole Krauss * Peter Moore on Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa * Valerie Grove on Lesley Blanch * Piers Brendon on British immigration * Dmitri Levitin on Martin Luther * Wendy Moore on Robert McCrum * Oliver Balch on Calcutta * Robert Colls on Englishness * Philip Maughan on Peter Stamm * Miranda France on Bernard MacLaverty * and much, much more…

Peter Moore

Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa

By Joseph Farrell

GK Chesterton once revealed that Robert Louis Stevenson had an enduring affection for his childish verse ‘My Bed Is Like a Boat’. It is a nimble little rhyme and a neat image; it spoke peculiarly to Stevenson, whose voyaging mind was so often confined to the bedroom because of his poor state of health. As Joseph Farrell explains in his sparkling account of the last years of Stevenson’s life, which he spent in Samoa, these were the two sides of his character: the adventurer and the invalid. Stevenson was always on the move. Before travelling to the Pacific, he tried to satisfy his body and spirit in Davos, New York, San Francisco and Bournemouth. In December 1889, the Reverend W E Clarke of the London Missionary Society noticed an unfamiliar outline by the beach at Apia in Samoa... read more

Dmitri Levitin

1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation

By Peter Marshall

A historical anniversary can be something of a false god. Convinced – rightly or wrongly – of the reading public’s numerical obsession, publishers race to churn out their own ‘definitive’ accounts... read more

Piers Brendon

Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain

By Clair Wills

After an international cataclysm that shakes Britain’s finances to their foundations, a large influx of foreigners helps us to achieve a measure of recovery. Legally entitled to come here, they take on hard, unskilled... read more

Tracy Borman

The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present

By Ronald Hutton

What was a witch? This deceptively simple question has prompted fierce debate among scholars for many years. There are several possible sources of the word, including the Old English wicca... read more

Darrin McMahon

The Invention of Celebrity, 1750–1850

By Antoine Lilti (Translated by Lynn Jeffress)

Good history opens up sightlines not only to the past but to the present as well. It allows us to see aspects of our current circumstance as the product of developments that are deeper and richer... read more

Miranda France

Midwinter Break

By Bernard MacLaverty

Writers may see young love as offering greater potential for excitement and plot, but, as Bernard MacLaverty’s fifth novel shows, love in later life can be both more complex and ultimately more affecting. A marriage that has lasted forty years has... read more

Robin Simon

Gainsborough: A Portrait

By James Hamilton

Gainsborough painted the most refined and delicate portraits of any British artist and the most romantic landscapes before Turner. In his mature paintings he was a master of evocative brushwork, deployed with uncanny precision. Yet in person... read more