Forget the salacious book titles (Taking It All In, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, I Lost It at the Movies) and the salty vocabulary – ‘soft’, ‘whorey’, ‘pulpy’ – Pauline Kael was a devoted mother and grandmother who spent the bulk of her life doing nothing more exciting than watching, talking and writing about films. Which […]
Defending Philip Larkin from his critics, Christopher Hitchens said that readers loved him because he understood everyday suffering. He mapped ‘decaying communities, old people’s homes, housing estates and clinics’ better than most social democrats. While dying is often referred to as ‘going down hill’, Larkin, Hitchens saw, realised that debilitation is not an easy glide […]
Ryszard Kapuściński was journalism’s answer to superman. His blend of suicidal derring-do and empathy for the powerless transformed the messy ingredients of daily news coverage into literary gold. A witness to dozens of wars, coups and revolutions, he befriended Che Guevara and Patrice Lumumba. He had a knack for narrowly escaping death by firing squad. […]
David Foster Wallace hanged himself in the autumn of 2008, leaving a dense, agonised, brilliant and moving body of work. What was already a more than usually cultish following for a living American writer entered, as the publication puff for this biography vulgarly boasts, the territory of a Kurt Cobain or a James Dean.
Sir Thomas Wyatt was the ambassador, the ‘beloved familiar’ and allegedly the rival in love of Henry VIII. During his rather short but fiery lifetime, he found himself banished from court and clapped in the Tower for offences ranging from affray to a supposed affair with Anne Boleyn. In truth, the legend of this romance […]
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The latest volume of T S Eliot’s letters, covering 1942–44, reveals a constant stream of correspondence. By contrast, his poetic output was negligible.
Robert Crawford ponders if Eliot the poet was beginning to be left behind.
Robert Crawford - Advice to Poets
Robert Crawford: Advice to Poets - The Letters of T S Eliot, Volume 10: 1942–1944 by Valerie Eliot & John Haffenden (edd)
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What a treat to see CLODIA @Lit_Review this holiday!
"[Boin] has succeeded in embedding Clodia in a much less hostile environment than the one in which she found herself in Ciceronian Rome. She emerges as intelligent, lively, decisive and strong-willed.”
Daisy Dunn - O, Lesbia!
Daisy Dunn: O, Lesbia! - Clodia of Rome: Champion of the Republic by Douglas Boin
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‘A fascinating mixture of travelogue, micro-history and personal reflection.’
Read the review of @Civil_War_Spain’s Travels Through the Spanish Civil War in @Lit_Review👇
John Foot - Grave Matters
John Foot: Grave Matters - Travels Through the Spanish Civil War by Nick Lloyd; El Generalísimo: Franco – Power...
literaryreview.co.uk