Andrew Roberts
His Waterloo
Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made
By Alison Castle
Taschen 1,112pp £44.99
This book chronicles the obsession of one of the world’s greatest film directors with one of the world’s greatest generals. Stanley Kubrick spent the second half of the 1960s, immediately after making 2001: A Space Odyssey, preparing to film a biopic of Napoleon, which was intended to be three hours long and utterly accurate in every minute detail. It is one of the great cinematographical tragedies that first MGM and then United Artists decided that the project was simply too financially risky. Big historical epics were out of fashion, and a deeply disappointed Kubrick had to move on.
Yet before the studios made up their minds against him, Kubrick delved into the life of Napoleon in a way unmatched by any other director on any other subject. This enormous book is testament to his passion for verisimilitude, amounting almost to a psychological disorder. A normal film
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
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk