Adrian Weale
Hard Times
The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict
By Peter Beaumont
Harvill Secker 280pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
Peter Beaumont, Foreign Affairs Editor of The Observer, has covered a wide range of conflicts across Europe, Africa and the Middle East since joining the paper in 1989. The Secret Life of War is his attempt to distil this experience of war, focusing on the human impact on combatants, civilians and the journalists who observe them.
Well, it’s an undeniably laudable intention and Beaumont makes a good stab at it. My first impression was that the book was relentlessly solipsistic. This was unfair. Actually, the focus on himself and his own reactions to the situations in which he has found himself over the years
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
'"The Last Colony" is, among other things, part of the campaign to shift the British position through political pressure. As with all good propaganda, Sands’s case is based in truth, if not the whole of it.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/empire-strikes-back
'To her enemies she was the alien temptress who led Charles I away from the "true religion" of Protestantism and towards royal absolutism.'
Lucy Hughes-Hallett reviews @LeandadeLisle's 'colourful', 'persuasive' new biography of Henrietta Maria.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/royalist-generalissima
'Empathy is our moral portal gun, and it jams from underuse.'
Don Paterson on Portal 2, catching Covid on the Eurostar, and rereading Ian Hamilton’s 'Against Oblivion'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/portal-agony