Patrick Scrivenor
Cataholics & Catophobes
The Trainable Cat: How to Make Life Happier for You and Your Cat
By John Bradshaw & Sarah Ellis
Allen Lane 325pp £20
Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer
By Peter P Marra & Chris Santella
Princeton University Press 212pp £18.95
These two books appear at a time when Larry (the Number 10 cat, in the tabby and white corner) and Palmerston (the Foreign Office cat, in the black and white corner) have made headlines by fighting like ragamuffins all over Downing Street. They are billed as ‘mousers’, but surely what Westminster needs is a really good ratter. What it needs even more is some advice from John Bradshaw and Sarah Ellis, who have filled three hundred pages with sound advice on training cats.
Training cats is nothing new. Lions and tigers have been trained for centuries to do unlikely things – jumping through hoops of fire, for instance – and have only occasionally eaten their trainers by way of revenge. Bradshaw and Ellis do not mention hoops of fire, but I’m
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
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk