Claire Harman
How They Roared
Mr Foote’s Other Leg: Comedy, Tragedy and Murder in Georgian London
By Ian Kelly
Picador 440pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
‘Few things are as fleeting as a joker’s reputation,’ wrote an early biographer of Samuel Foote, Georgian London’s most successful and edgy comedian. Hardly anyone has heard of Foote today, and his star was falling even at the time of his death in 1777, his name in ruins after two shocking sex scandals. The funeral took place at night and was sparsely attended. Foote had been too brilliant a satirist and impersonator to inspire much trust, perhaps, and too fond of intrigue, bad company and litigation to endear himself to anyone for long.
His career was fuelled by scandal and publicity. He came to fame in the 1740s by exploiting what most people might have tried to cover up: the murder by one of his uncles of another aboard a ship in the Bristol Channel. Foote was a law student at the time,
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 publicist interviewed by Fairrie praises Collins and her heroines ... because these were "women who behaved like men". Is that supposed to be good, given how men behaved towards Collins?'
Peter Conrad reviews a new documentary about Jackie Collins.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/easy-writer
'Walk down your supermarket pet food aisle and you’ll be hard pressed to find a single brand that claims to be made with high-welfare meat. More expensive pet food should not be about spoiling our cats but about sparing the farmed beasts we feed them.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/meattoo
'Two things prevent [this book] from collapsing under the weight of its own wayward ambition. Colin Jones, one of the finest living scholars of early modern France, is no ordinary historian. And the day in question, 27 July 1794, was no ordinary day'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/night-of-the-guillotine