David Pryce-Jones
1979 & All That
Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic
By Michael Axworthy
Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 496pp £25 order from our bookshop
Events at the close of the 20th century illustrate what has been called the cunning of history. The coincidence of Ayatollah Khomeini’s seizure of power in Iran in 1979 and the end of the Cold War a decade later brought about a shift in the international order. Hitherto passive and seemingly marginalised, Muslims were now able to operate politically and militarily in a world suddenly freed from former restraints, sometimes confronting each other and sometimes engaged in a clash of civilisations with non-Muslims.
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
'Of all modern English poets, Larkin is perhaps the one with whom most readers feel some imaginative affinity, a sense of having lived in the same world, with the same streets, the same unvoiced longings and anxieties.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/hull-revisited
For the summer issue of @Lit_Review I wrote about THE GOLDEN RULE, @AmandaPCraig's latest: a lean, high-stakes drama touching on domestic violence, Generation Rent and video game design.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/murder-they-spoke
'He wrote obsessively and at tremendous length – as a youth William drew a witty sketch of his father vigorously beating a dead horse – and frayed his nerves in the process.'
John Banville charts the turbulent life of William James.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-pragmatists-progress