Robert Chesshyre
Fathers of the Nation
American Caesars: Lives of the US Presidents – from Franklin D Roosevelt to George W Bush
By Nigel Hamilton
The Bodley Head 566pp £25 order from our bookshop
Just after I first moved to XXXXX report about the United States for The Observer, the Washington Post ran a piece about the various people who had tried to break into the White House. One might have supposed that they were all intent on harming the president. In fact it was quite the contrary: they mainly had grievances – a wrongfully jailed son; a wife dying of untreated cancer; a disputed sacking – and they felt that, if only they could explain their woes to the president himself, all their troubles would melt away.
The man who sits in the White House is the father of the nation, and successful presidents are those, like Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, who understand this. The lesson was rapidly brought home to me. My ‘first’ president during my reporting stint was Jimmy Carter, an intelligent
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
A new biography of the archaeologist and explorer Charles Masson provides a 'tale of intrigue, espionage, blackmail, disguise, rebellion, treasure and the discovery of lost civilisations', says @BijanOmrani.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/our-man-in-kabul
'Intellect and sensuality commingle in most, whether they are about a recalcitrant schoolgirl or an ice princess.'
@MirandaFrance1 reviews 'Medusa's Ankles', a new selection of A S Byatt's short fiction.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/expect-the-unexpected
'What they created in the neighbourhood resembled more a distillation of the High German culture of their past than a fresh start.'
@GeorgeProchnik tells the story of the German–Jewish intellectuals who settled in Jerusalem in the early 20th century.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/vienna-by-temple-mount