Simon Baker
Eloquent Moaning
Mother’s Milk
By Edward St Aubyn
Picador 279pp £12.99
The demise of well-to-do bohemian England must be one of the longest terminal illnesses on record. It was dying in the fiction of Evelyn Waugh and of Nancy Mitford, and yet sixty years later, in Edward St Aubyn’s new novel, we find it gamely dying still. This time, however, things finally seem to be critical.
Mother’s Milk is plotted with deliberate minimalism. Its subject is not a set of events but rather the states of mind of its characters, and in particular that of Patrick Melrose, around whose mid-life crisis the novel turns. Patrick, who appeared as a younger man in St Aubyn’s first three
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
It wasn’t until 1825 that Pepys’s diary became available for the first time. How it was eventually decrypted and published is a story of subterfuge and duplicity.
Kate Loveman tells the tale.
Kate Loveman - Publishing Pepys
Kate Loveman: Publishing Pepys
literaryreview.co.uk
Arthur Christopher Benson was a pillar of the Edwardian establishment. He was supremely well connected. As his newly published diaries reveal, he was also riotously indiscreet.
Piers Brendon compares Benson’s journals to others from the 20th century.
Piers Brendon - Land of Dopes & Tories
Piers Brendon: Land of Dopes & Tories - The Benson Diaries: Selections from the Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson by Eamon Duffy & Ronald Hyam (edd)
literaryreview.co.uk
Of the siblings Gwen and Augustus John, it is Augustus who has commanded most attention from collectors and connoisseurs.
Was he really the finer artist, asks Tanya Harrod, or is it time Gwen emerged from her brother’s shadow?
Tanya Harrod - Cut from the Same Canvas
Tanya Harrod: Cut from the Same Canvas - Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell
literaryreview.co.uk