Christopher Coker
Most Of Us Survived
‘A frightful queerness has come into life,’ wrote H G Wells in his last published work. Perhaps, the most frightful thing about life in 1945 was that it did not seem queer enough. The world had grown used to war. It was Wells's generation that seemed naïve in ever thinking that war could be fought to end war itself. In the ruins of Europe following the fall of the Third Reich, Wells seemed confirmed in his conviction that war would never end, unless that is war itself extinguished the human race. ‘There is no way out or around or through the impasse... It is the end,’ he concluded despairingly.
In this strikingly clear and sober work the great doyen of Cold War historians, John Lewis Gaddis, begins with another voice of the time, one almost as despairing. It is that of the 43-year-old Eric Blair, or George Orwell. In 1946, the year that Wells died, he rented a house
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
'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
The Anatomy of Melancholy 'has never quite become a widely recognised, bona fide "classic". For long stretches, the bulk of its readership has been restricted to bibliophiles and scholars. It has had an air of murkiness and desuetude'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/phantoms-of-the-mind