‘Gastrophysics’, a portmanteau of ‘gastronomy’ and ‘psychophysics’ (the study of perception), is defined by Charles Spence as ‘the scientific study of those factors that influence our multisensory experience whilst tasting food and drink’. In layman’s terms, it is an examination of the external factors that shape our responses to food and drink, which, as none […]
In the days when Britain was the world’s most far-flung superpower, maps and globes showed all its subject territories in shades of red. For those of us long enough in the tooth to recall the time when those old maps were displayed in classrooms, there will always be a deep, if seldom articulated, link between […]
David Jones will be unknown to many, but he is revered by those who have discovered his work in all its complexity and power. He was one of the most original British artists of the 20th century, even if his creative light was often overshadowed by brighter and more brittle talents. Despite being showered with […]
Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship, with a thoughtful introduction by Alan Powers, accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (27 May–17 September 2017), marking the 75th anniversary of Eric Ravilious’s death. Ravilious has been the subject of major exhibitions and monographs and it might seem that there is little more to say about this beguiling figure. But Andy Friend attempts something difficult and useful – a multiple biography of the network of artists in Ravilious’s circle, mostly his fellow students at the Royal College of Art, who came to maturity in the interwar years
I have often marvelled at the number of memorials that fill the streets of Berlin. Alongside the many monuments, museums and preserved ruins there are countless other intimate mementos of the past. Brass plates attached to cobblestones set into the pavement mark the sites where Jews and others were rounded up by the Nazis. Plaques […]
Survival narratives come in various forms and the particular endurance tests involved are not always of a kind that entails living off boiled bootstraps in an open boat, hiding in sewers or wrestling with grizzly bears. It is hard to imagine someone as urbane and sophisticated as Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord doing any of these things, […]
Is there a political philosophy of conservatism? This seems unlikely. Communism in eastern Europe ended while trying to preserve itself with militant determination. Socialists have often cleaved with rigidity to their own traditions. Various liberalisms have identified themselves with a conservative as well as a radical ethos. It would appear impossible, therefore, to connect conservatism […]
Historians have a bad habit of glossing over the Protectorate. It just isn’t interesting: no drama, no battles, all those drab Puritans cancelling Christmas. Traditionalists tend to lump the four and a half years of Oliver Cromwell’s reign as Lord Protector in with the rest of the Interregnum
When the kingdom of Granada fell to Ferdinand and Isabella in January 1492, a humanist in their pay hailed ‘the extinction of Spain’s calamities’. The victory, according to a chronicler in the Basque Country, ‘redeemed Spain, indeed all Europe’. The pope agreed, ordering bonfires and bells. The conquest and its aftermath changed the profile of […]
The fiery meteor that was Victor Grayson blazed briefly across the socialist firmament in Edwardian England. He was a flamboyant rebel, a handsome, spellbinding orator who rose up from nowhere, winning a famous by-election in Colne Valley in July 1907 at the age of twenty-five. He embodies the native American notion of ‘the legend that […]
The central action of Wendy Moore’s startlingly curious book takes place over a single year at the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria. As a contemporary journalist put it, ‘There is no chapter in the history of Medicine
Any single decade of Czesław Miłosz’s life was eventful enough to provide ample material for a volume of biography on its own. He lived to the age of ninety-three and his collected poems form a volume of 1,400 pages, so this 500-page study of his life and work is a miracle of compression. Only the physical strength of a bear and the patience of
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘In matters of the heart, cats are at the heart of the matter.’
So says @OSoden on the explosion of cat mania in the early twentieth century.
Oliver Soden - Pussies Galore
Oliver Soden: Pussies Galore - Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Kathryn Hughes
literaryreview.co.uk
A recent inquiry found that British security services had effectively licensed the IRA assassin known as Stakeknife to commit multiple murders.
@malodoherty picks apart the murky world of spying and counterespionage in Northern Ireland.
Malachi O’Doherty - Belfast Confidential
Malachi O’Doherty: Belfast Confidential - Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Espionage, Murder and Justice ...
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Creative non-fiction, I am so sick of this bullshit’, says Michael Anderson, an editor of the New York Times Book Review.
@rosalyster returns to its genesis.
Rosa Lyster - Two Sides to the Story
Rosa Lyster: Two Sides to the Story - The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting: How a Bunch of Rabble Rousers, O...
literaryreview.co.uk