For almost forty years, Robert Hughes has turned his shrewd and perspicacious gaze to the world of the visual arts. Through television, most famously his vigorous defence of modernism in 1980, The Shock of the New; through a series of impressive monographs, not least a masterly study of Goya; and through his prolific contributions to […]
Sir Alan Lascelles, known to his friends as ‘Tommy’, was a courtier. He served as Principal Private Secretary to King George VI from 1943 until his death, and to the Queen for the first two years of her reign. From 1935 to 1943, he had been Assistant Private Secretary to three sovereigns, and during the […]
Fans of Teffi in this country have had to wait only two years since the publication of Subtly Worded, her remarkable collection of short stories, for two further volumes to appear. Memories, her memoir of the Civil War, and Rasputin and Other Ironies, a collection of shorter reminiscences, are both, like Subtly Worded, published by Pushkin Press and translated by the excellent Robert Chandler and colleagues
It is hard to conceive of a worse nightmare that any mother or father could face. Having raised four children to adulthood and settled into a happy second marriage, Lu Spinney enjoyed a privileged life revolving around dinner parties with friends, boisterous family lunches and holidays in France. Then in March 2006 her eldest son, […]
‘I took my life and threw it on the skip’ begins one of James Fenton’s best poems. After which, in the manner of skip economy, ‘some bugger’ nicked it and threw his own on the skip in exchange. Finding this other discarded life, Fenton’s narrator brings it in, dries it by the stove and tries it […]
‘It’s not so easy writing about nothing’, states Patti Smith at the beginning of M Train. She just makes it look easy. M Train is essentially a companion piece to her 2010 memoir, Just Kids, which was a record of her life in New York in the early 1970s with her friend the photographer Robert […]
‘Must we document everything?’ exclaims Greta Gerwig, heroine of Noah Baumbach’s recent film Mistress America, when someone takes a casual snap of her on a mobile phone. Tweets, emails and instant photography allow us to keep constant track of our lives and to bombard the outside world with the details. But one wonders what effect […]
Here are three chilling but revealing books about North Korea and the perils of escaping from it. Lucia Jang surprised me by making plain that even after decades of brainwashing by the ruling Kim dynasty, ordinary Koreans remain traditional and superstitious in their habits and beliefs. But the cruelty of the North Korean regime is […]
Admirers of Simon Gray will not be disappointed by this last volume in his trilogy of ‘smoking diaries’. Many of the topics he treats are now familiar: the delights of swimming, the miseries of air travel, the pains and humiliations of the decaying body, and then, more sombre still, the deaths of close friends or […]
This charming book encompasses all those elements that help make a modern bestseller – espionage, treachery, class warfare, politics, celebrity, drink, nostalgia and … football. Jim Riordan is Professor Emeritus in Russian Studies at the University of Surrey. He is also a novelist, a writer of children’s books, a translator, and a graduate of the […]
Surprisingly, given the rage Shalom Auslander can muster against God for even the slightest mishap, this memoir contains no lamentation for his own circumcision. It is the prospective birth of a son that causes turmoil in the mind of this Jew who has rejected the traditions and laws of his forefathers: will his boy get […]
This autobiography starts with a boy’s love for his mother, so beautifully evoked that when she dies of cancer it is heartbreaking. Not that he was supposed to feel it so deeply. Her unselfishness, together with the fear of emotion so common in English people of her class, made her ‘spare’ him the facts of […]
The first volume of Prokofiev’s extraordinary diary, which covered the period 1907–14, was published by Faber two years ago. I reviewed it enthusiastically in these pages, expressing impatience for its sequel. Two years is a long time to be feeling impatient; so I had already taken the trouble to have short sections of it translated […]
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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