The study of the ancient Persians is, as Richard Stoneman rather artfully puts it, a thriving business. So far from ruling over a ‘forgotten empire’, as a British Museum exhibition unhappily described it a decade back, the Achaemenid emperors – from Cyrus the Great to Darius III – ruled the fastest-growing, largest and most culturally […]
There is a certain set of topics New Scientist calls ‘fruitloopery’ that experience tells us should be avoided at all costs. The older we become, the more glumly certain we are that we have heard it all before, whether it’s UFOs, Bigfoot, psychic phenomena or even just plain old homeopathy. Atlantis is firmly on this […]
Genghis Khan made the news a dozen years ago when a team of geneticists at the University of Oxford led by Tatiana Zerjal noticed a curious pattern in the distribution of an unusual Y chromosome among Asian males. Zerjal’s team suggested that this genetic variation could be traced back to a common ancestor. They located […]
In everything except husbands, and especially in literature, my wife’s tastes are exacting. I have devoted years to the effort of crafting an opening sentence good enough to get her to read on. ‘May I,’ I asked experimentally, ‘read you the opening of Peter Frankopan’s new book, to see what you think of it?’ My […]
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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)
literaryreview.co.uk
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
literaryreview.co.uk
‘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