Sam Kitchener

Guilt Trip

Beautiful Animals

By

Hogarth 296pp £14.99 order from our bookshop

The Greek island of Hydra has long been a favoured bolthole for the louche and bohemian. ‘Aesthetically,’ wrote Henry Miller, ‘it is perfect.’ In 1960 Leonard Cohen marvelled at the way ‘life has been going on here exactly the same for hundreds of years.’ The novelist Lawrence Osborne is well acquainted with Hydra’s history as a sun-blushed haven from the ugliness of modern life, having written about the island wearing his other Panama hat as a travel journalist for the New York Times.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • A treat from the LR Archive: exactly 20 years ago, Malcolm Bradbury reviewed John Updike's 'Bech at Bay' ,
    • ‘When bullets come close, the noise they make as they go past changes from a zing to a crack’ John Lanchester's dy… ,
    • Man with a Bloody Paintbrush: Robin Simon on Lucian Freud ,
    • Jane Ridley reviews The Diaries of Kenneth Rose (ed. D R Thorpe) ,
    • ‘Look,’ says Trump. ‘The fact is I’m only human.’ On the evidence of this book that point is debatable. From the A… ,
    • From our December/January issue - here's John Banville's review of Colm Tóibín on the fathers of Wilde, Yeats and J… ,
    • Hi , we would love to review 'Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar' in our next issue! Please could you get in… ,
    Follow Us