Simon Heffer
Bland Tour
We need to know about Germany. While we are in the EU, it is the main bankroller of the project, and all dance to its tune. When we are out of it, Germany will remain the most significant country in Continental Europe in terms of population and economy, and an understanding of it will be essential to our success in the new order. I came to this book imagining it might help me to grasp that country, its people and above all its motive forces. I was wrong.
Giles MacDonogh has written several books on aspects of German history; he has worked as a journalist there; he has visited the country frequently; he speaks the language; he knows his fair share of luminaries. Yet if this has given him any stunning insights into Germany, he has for
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
The Anatomy of Melancholy 'has never quite become a widely recognised, bona fide "classic". For long stretches, the bulk of its readership has been restricted to bibliophiles and scholars. It has had an air of murkiness and desuetude'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/phantoms-of-the-mind
'Don’t think of Watergate as being about a break-in, but about what the break-in exposed: dirty ops, dirty tricks, dirty money.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/all-the-presidents-mendacity
'The leopard skins that she wore like a big-game hunter, the swaggering strut ... every detail semaphored power and valiantly atoned for inadequacy.'
Peter Conrad weighs up Laura Fairrie's documentary about Jackie Collins and her 'shag-happy fiction'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/easy-writer