Andrew Barrow
Death On The Tracks
The swirling snowstorms and ongoing economic confusion and casualties of early February provided this reviewer with the perfect atmosphere in which to read this bitterly gruesome novel set in the revolutionary, corpse-strewn Russia of 1918.
The story begins in St Petersburg a few days before Lenin’s coup. The fate of the Tsar and his family is in the balance. Though still puffing away at Ortega Grande cigars and knocking back ninety-year-old cognac from silver flasks in their chauffeured Rolls-Royces, capitalists, aristocrats in long fur-edged coats and other privileged types are on the run. Shit, vomit, fog, mud and Bolshevism fill the streets.
Enter, or rather re-enter, Charlie Doig, hero of James Fleming’s last wintry offering, White Blood. Half-Scottish, half-Russian, Doig immediately reminds us that he started life as a naturalist and hit world renown at twenty-three by capturing an absurdly rare beetle in a post office in western Burma. Now
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘He has become a kind of global guru, public intellectual and consultant to the great. He is the ultimate geopolitical gerontocrat.’
From July 2022: Piers Brendon on Henry Kissinger.
Piers Brendon - Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her
Piers Brendon: Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her - Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Even setting to one side the historically neuralgic relationship with ... Ireland, Britain’s insular periphery has from at least the time of the Romans presented difficulties for authorities wishing to centralise.’
Peter Marshall on Britain's islands.
Peter Marshall - Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago
Peter Marshall: Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago - The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
literaryreview.co.uk
Offer ends soon! Take advantage of our best ever Black Friday offer and get a year's subscription for £29.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/blackfriday/