Harry Mount
Making Yourself At Home
G K Chesterton said it was more original to drop in on your next-door neighbour unannounced than to take a trip round the world. Now Bill Bryson is taking the theory a step further. After twenty-five years of going round the world for his travel books, he has turned his eye to his immediate surroundings – more precisely the inside of his handsome rectory in Norfolk, built in 1851.
His theory is that homes are extraordinarily complex repositories. The big things that happen in the outside world – the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, wars, famines – have effects that you can spot all over your own home. And the little things, too. A clever carpenter in the
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