The subtitle of Blasted with Antiquity might lead you to expect the author to present a selection of books designed to cheer up readers in old age, starting perhaps with the novels of P G Wodehouse. Arthur Marshall, one recalls, always liked to read a few pages of Wodehouse in bed so that, if he […]
The most obvious problem in writing a history of poison pen letters is that only half the story can be told. Whodunnit and why must often remain a matter of speculation. Even if the culprit is identified, their motive for writing tends to be clouded. What, for example, persuaded the eminently respectable Winifred Simner to […]
Browsing in the basement archives of Oxford University Press one day in 2015, lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie struck gold – well, lexicographer’s gold. Outwardly, it was only a battered black book tied with a cream ribbon, but it contained the names and addresses of some three thousand volunteers who had contributed to the making of the […]
As all authors know, writing about the sex act is a perilous task. This much is, of course, very familiar to readers of Literary Review, the former editor of which, Auberon Waugh, co-founded the magazine’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award in 1993. Waugh aimed to lambast the kind of ‘ham-fisted, otiose, coy, mind-blowingly awful’ sex scenes that were rife in fiction at the
Edward Brooke-Hitching’s The Madman’s Library begins with a question. ‘Which books’, he wonders, ‘would inhabit the shelves of the greatest library of literary curiosities, put together by a collector unhindered by space, time and budget?’ It’s a rather flimsy peg on which to hang this ragbag of bibliographical oddities, but no matter. There are enough […]
One day in the summer of 1705, a woman in a black velvet mask knocked on the door of a printer’s shop off London’s Fetter Lane. She brought with her a manuscript entitled The Memorial of the Church of England, Humbly Offer’d to the Consideration of all True Lovers of our Church and Constitution, and […]
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Literary Review - For People Who Devour Books
Book reviews by Philip Womack
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Juggling balls, dead birds, lottery tickets, hypochondriac journalists. All the makings of an excellent collection. Loved Camille Bordas’s One Sun Only in the latest @Lit_Review
Natalie Perman - Normal People
Natalie Perman: Normal People - One Sun Only by Camille Bordas
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Despite adopting a pseudonym, George Sand lived much of her life in public view.
Lucasta Miller asks whether Sand’s fame has obscured her work.
Lucasta Miller - Life, Work & Adoration
Lucasta Miller: Life, Work & Adoration - Becoming George: The Invention of George Sand by Fiona Sampson
literaryreview.co.uk