Charles Elliott
Getting out of Jail
The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal behind the World’s Favourite Board Game
By Mary Pilon
Bloomsbury 313pp £20 order from our bookshop
Monopoly doesn’t necessarily bring out the best in people. It can be excessively competitive. To avoid bloodshed, or at least a pitched battle using little wooden houses, families have been known to outlaw it. Yet it remains one of the most widely loved board games ever produced. What may come as a surprise – or possibly not, depending on one’s level of cynicism – is to learn that its history is as full of underhand dealings, fraud, legal battles and, yes, monopolistic shenanigans as anything in the game itself.
Ever since the American games company Parker Brothers first put it on sale in 1935, a foundation myth about the invention of Monopoly has circulated. What happened, so the story goes, is that a salesman named Charles Darrow, on his uppers, was inspired to devise a game on a piece
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
For two decades the Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote an anonymous column for a literary journal, inviting writers to send in their writing for her to critique.
Joanna Kavenna peruses her feedback.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/have-you-considered-accountancy
Mazower turns 'the Greek Revolution from a simplistic, two-dimensional story into a vast colourful fresco populated by a cast of characters that is astonishing in its diversity.'
Stathis N Kalyvas on a new book about the Greek Revolution of 1821.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/freedom-or-death
'The subtitle of this biography, "Never a Dull Moment", refers to the momentous events of George V’s reign, but the book’s real surprise is that its author, having laboured through the king’s deadly diaries, does not find him dull.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/colonel-blimp-enthroned