Raymond Seitz
Escalating Concerns
Strolling across Harvard Yard one fine day in 1954, 31-year-old Henry Kissinger bumped into Arthur Schlesinger Jr, the historian already close to renown, who would become Kissinger’s lifelong friend. Kissinger had a newly minted PhD, but despite his obvious brilliance and prize-winning dissertation, the university had not offered him an expected associate professorship; nor had he been invited to join the Society of Fellows. Kissinger was adrift.
According to Niall Ferguson’s monumental first volume of Kissinger’s life (at almost one thousand pages, ‘monumental’ in the sense of ‘very large’), the chance conversation with Schlesinger set Kissinger in a new direction that would eventually take him far from the ivy-covered compounds of American academe. He had already travelled a fair distance. Born in Fürth, Germany, in 1923 and raised within the Orthodox strictures of the town’s close-knit Jewish community, Kissinger emigrated with his family to the United States in 1938, only months before Kristallnacht. At least thirteen of his relatives eventually perished in the Holocaust.
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
'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency