Miranda Seymour
Building A Life
Pevsner: The Early Life – Germany and Art
By Stephen Games
Continuum Books 224pp £20
‘A Nazi in England’ screamed the Evening Standard headline that flagged up the appearance, eight years ago, of a collection of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner’s radio talks on art and architecture. The book’s editor was Stephen Games, and – thanks to that deceptive headline – it was assumed that he had opportunistically seized his moment to besmirch the name of one of England’s most revered figures. Games had a biography of Pevsner in the pipeline (the fine book under review is the first of that two-part project). Evidently (or so a bunch of over-excited critics and journos chose to assume), he hoped to win interest for it by making sensational claims; for this, Games deserved a thorough, and public, dressing-down.
He got it (and returns the honour by publishing a venomous sample of it in the appendix to this book). ‘The man who helped open our eyes to architecture deserves better than this slur of guilt by association with the Nazis’, droned The Times, in a particularly malicious
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
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm