‘Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly,’ wrote Marcus Aurelius in Meditations. I suspect the subtitle of Salman Rushdie’s Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder is an invitation to call to mind the last great Stoic philosopher. These words popped into my head while […]
Harold Macmillan, the most lordly of postwar prime ministers, was proud of the fact that his great-grandfather Duncan Macmillan was a dirt-poor Isle of Arran crofter, and that his family had risen from absolute poverty to wealth, success and high status through their own efforts. Specifically, the family owed its rise to the efforts of […]
When Franz Kafka died on 3 June 1924, he had published just a few collections of short prose, none of them to much acclaim. The majority of the writing for which he is now known and celebrated, such as the novels The Trial and The Castle, were left unfinished and published posthumously thanks to Kafka’s […]
If the 1920s society journals had the Ruthven twins, Margaret and Alison, to amuse their readers, then their 1930s equivalents had the Pagets, Celia and Mamaine. The Quality of Love reproduces an extraordinary press photo of the pair from March 1935, shortly before they were presented at court, their natural resemblance only emphasised by identical […]
Is there anyone quite so sentimental as an old newspaper hack? In his memoir, David Robson conjures up a lost world of hot metal type, endless lunches and larger-than-life characters. And, of course, legendary editors. The Sunday Times’s Harold Evans and The Independent’s Andreas Whittam Smith are recalled with warmth and admiration, Andrew Neil and […]
He was an American wildlife photographer who has been described as ‘half Byron, half Tarzan’. His friend and biographer Graham Boynton writes that he was a ‘Byronic figure with a mean streak that occasionally manifested itself in violence’. A known risk-taker who was also rebellious and unpredictable, he had major retrospectives at museums of photography […]
The organisers of the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions, held in Chicago, had intended the event to be a showcase of American Christianity. Representatives of other faiths were expected to sit wide-eyed in wonder at the achievements of rational Protestantism mixed with American material prowess. This is not what happened. Attention focused instead on […]
From a purely literary point of view, this is without doubt the best autobiography written by an Israeli prime minister. In Bibi, Benjamin Netanyahu, who in separate stints has served as Israel’s prime minister for fifteen years and is also expected to form the next government following November’s general election, recounts his life story in […]
By any standard, Primo Levi’s works must be ranked among the finest autobiographical writing of our age. Philip Roth’s claim that lf This Is a Man is ‘one of the century’s truly necessary books’ is more than just promotional hyperbole. It is the recognition that Levi’s exploration of the dark universe that was Auschwitz should […]
Mathematicians – the really, really good ones – are not like other people. One of the (true) stories recounted by Paul Hoffman concerns the mathematician who slept with his wife only on those days of the month that were prime numbers – the second, third, fifth, seventh, and so on. Not so bad early in […]
A year or two before Peter Cook died, I arranged a meeting between him and my editor at Century, Mark Booth. Mark wanted him to write an autobiography. They met at Rules. Peter arrived announcing that he had just finished his autobiography, and that he had it with him. ‘I’d love to see it,’ said […]
For a writer, failure can be as slippery a notion to define as success. Everybody knows about the millionaire authors with seven–digit sales whose low self–esteem causes them to bristle at bad reviews in Denmark. Less visible are the legion of fledgling scribblers who see their stories published in little magazines as placing them on […]
There are few writers more beguiling than Oliver Sacks, although I have known some people who found him just a little too beguiling, as if he were more of a magician or salesman than a mere searcher after and recorder of the truth. There is something in us – could it be envy? – that […]
For all his assiduity and weighty pronouncements on literary matters, Stephen Spender all too often comes across as a slightly ludicrous figure. Evelyn Waugh loved to mock him as a ‘semi-literate socialist’; James Lees-Milne recalled the poet in his wartime fireman’s uniform, draped across a hospital bed bearing the gorgeous form of ‘the Sergeant’, a […]
What does John Richardson think he is doing? He is half-way through his monumental Life of Picasso, with two volumes down and at least two more to go – you would think that, at seventy-five, he would feel some urgency to finish it. But he has taken time out to write this fluffy memoir. Of […]
Theodore Roosevelt was a phenomenon. Reading this absorbing account of his eight years in the White House, I’m reminded of the days when it was not exceptional for half a dozen qualified men to fight it out for the presidency. Consider the line-up in 1968. On the right, Richard Nixon, who was to win, and […]
Before reading this compelling study, I knew little of the details of Isadora Duncan’s extraordinary life. I was familiar with the goddess image, of course, and someone who had seen her dance in Paris in the early 1900s had given me a first-hand account, expressing surprise at the audience’s ecstatic response. Furthermore, I had battled […]
It features wizards and magic, it sells in millions worldwide, and now a lavish movie version of it is adding hordes of new fans to the already spectacular total. No, I’m not talking about Harry Potter. Since the mid-1950s – approximately forty years before J K Rowling dreamt up Hogwarts – J R R Tolkien’s […]
One man lived D H Lawrence’s life; it has taken three to write it. John Worthen covered D H Lawrence: The Early Years 1885–1912; Mark Kinkead-Weekes was responsible for the middle stretch, D H Lawrence: Triumph to Exile 1912–1922. Now David Ellis, to whom the home straight was assigned, has carried the story to the […]
Effie Gray’s story is extraordinary and Cooper feasts upon it with appetite. ‘Her life reads like a novel, full of colour, sensation, despair and romance.’ So does Cooper’s biography. We engage with Effie immediately. Cooper starts her story on the day Effie left her husband, the art critic and social reformer John Ruskin, to return […]
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