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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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