Claus von Bulow
A Botched Job
The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II
By Edvard Radzinsky
Hodder & Stoughton 405pp £19.95 order from our bookshop
The author clearly has an affinity with his subject: Nicholas II was an incompetent ruler and Mr Radzinsky is an incompetent historian. Before I say another unkind word let me quote from the chapter where he introduces us to Alix of Hesse, the future Tsarina:
‘Hills grown up in forest descended into the misty valley of the Rhine, beloved by Goethe. There lay Darmstadt – at the season of her birth it would have been drowning in flowers, and in the Palace museum hung a Madonna by Hans Holbein.’
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
'It remains a poem comprised of clay fragments, short and long, and though the desert delivers up occasional additional text, we are a long way from a whole poem.'
Michael Schmidt on the oldest surviving poem in the world.
http://ow.ly/7OLF50xqr91
'Apparently if you’re a teenager and you send a declaration of love to someone heart emoji, heart emoji, heart emoji and they come back smiley face, that’s the worst.'
Thomas Blaikie tries to get his head round the language of the internet.
http://ow.ly/TU6d50xroRc
Don't forget to enter the competition to win a year's @royalacademy membership and a year's subscription to Literary Review.
Entries close on the 18th December.
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/page/ra-competition-literary-review-2019