Christopher Bray
Birds On Film
THE IMAGES OF two birds adorn the cover of Geoff Nicholson’s fourteenth novel: the head of a dodo and the torso of a babe with casabas like cannon balls. Extinction, Nicholson’s characteristically cunning narrative reminds us, awaits both varieties of beauty. Dodos drop dead, dumplings droop downward. Only art, by stabilising and concretising even the most labile of ephemera, can make a stab at transcending the depredations of time. As Nicholson’s porno-picture producer Jack Rozin puts it: ‘Smut [is] a memento mori, but I think that’s what all movies are when you get right down to it.’
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
With just a few days to go until the first issue of the new decade, does anyone recognise the stern figure on our February cover?
'Fiona Shaw, in Jonathan Miller’s production, is the best shrew I have seen. She starts off in a mustard yellow dress with a mustard sharp tongue.'
From the archive, Kate Kellaway on a 1988 production of 'The Taming of the Shrew'.
http://ow.ly/TWfX50y2Udw
'He was not a revolutionary at all of course. He was only marginally a socialist. His tradition was rooted in the Liberal aristocracy, and his politics were entirely bounded by Parliament.'
From the archive, Paul Foot on Tony Benn's diaries.
http://ow.ly/3VBf50y0Ebe