Harry Mount
Kindled Spirits
‘It’s a safe place for widows,’ said a helper at the last Dartington Literary Festival, when I asked her why book festivals were doing so well these days.
Now that’s not much of a slogan. ‘Safe for Widows’ carries all the dank, characteristically British, low expectations of a sign I saw this week outside a lock-keeper’s cottage outside Hertford – ‘Don’t pet the dog; it may bite’.
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'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw
'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me