Adam Sisman
Missives from a Master
Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson
By Richard Davenport-Hines (ed)
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 326pp £20 order from our bookshop
We are often told that the art of letter-writing is dead. The erosion of high culture, the contraction of leisure, the evaporation of an intellectual elite and now the prevalence of email have combined to render the activity extinct. If it is true that nobody writes good letters any more, this very entertaining volume reminds us of what we have lost.
It consists of letters written by the young Oxford don Hugh Trevor-Roper to the elderly connoisseur Bernard Berenson, from 1947 until Berenson’s death in 1959. Their correspondence began after Trevor-Roper had called on Berenson in Italy (the first of a dozen visits), arriving in a new Bentley purchased from 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
'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