Patrick French
Because He Could
Blood Against the Snows: The Tragic Story of Nepal’s Royal Dynasty
By Jonathan Gregson
Fourth Estate 226pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
When the Crown Prince of Nepal shot dead nearly his entire family last June, one journalist described it to me as the first genuine news event she could remember. September 11 was yet to come. Since I had written about India, and with India being close to Nepal, it was suggested that I might go out and write about it. I was undecided, but the late lamented Talk magazine was offering lots of space and even higher rates than the Literary Review, so I said yes.
In Kathmandu, demonstrations were being broken up, local journalists were being arrested, cars were burning on the streets and most Nepalese were in a state of hysterical shock. The actions of Crown Prince Dipendra were so unbelievable that many people preferred not to believe them, and instead concocted wild conspiracy theories about what had gone on inside the royal palace. It was the CIA; it was his uncle; there were accomplices; Dipendra had been cloned, and the clones had done the killing while the real Dipendra was abducted. Mohamed Al Fayed may even have thought the Duke of Edinburgh had had a hand in it.
Nepal's official press led with headlines such as 'Their Late Majesties
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
'We must all "shoot down the canard", McManus writes, that the World Cup is going to a nation "that doesn’t know or appreciate the Beautiful Game".'
Barnaby Crowcroft on the rise of Qatar.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/full-of-gas
Delighted to make my debut in @Lit_Review with a review of Philip Short's heavyweight new bio, Putin: His Life and Times
(Yes, it's behind a paywall, but newspapers and magazines need to earn money too...)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/vlad-the-invader
'As we examined more and more data from the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters ... we were amazed to find that there is almost never a case for permanently moving people out of the contaminated area after a big nuclear accident.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying