Douglas Johnson
Cut-Throat Courtiers
The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV
By ‘THE FRANCE of Louis XIV’ historians often really mean the court of Louis XIV The King felt that his own court ought to mimic that of the heavens – a multitude of stars, with him, ‘le Roi-Soleil’, at its centre. The royal court, whether it was travelling or stationary, was at the heart of government. It was at court that the life of the King unfolded. It was the only life he knew.
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I have just spent a wonderful few minutes re-reading the best book review of the year in my opinion. It's by Piers Brendon in September's issue of @Lit_Review. Beautifully captioned as 'Jack the Lad', Brendon takes Fredrik Logevall's JFK: Vol.I apart! It's a laugh a minute. Ouch!
'Perhaps the real modern polymaths are the hidden ones who do not themselves grab the limelight but have the expertise to bring together different fields of knowledge: librarians, teachers, editors of literary journals…'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/masters-of-none
Jan Morris, who died last week, was a much-loved contributor to our pages. In 2017, she wrote a characteristically witty article about the different winds, their various personalities and how they had touched her life: https://literaryreview.co.uk/let-it-blow.