Anne Smith
Nothing To Touch It
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
By Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape 256pp £10.95 order from our bookshop
'I . . . feel that there is a positive value in prescnting world history to the general public. Even if we do not know it, the history of the world is part of our mental furniture.' (J M Roberts, The Pelican History of the World).
'We get scared by history; we allow ourselves to be bullied by dates. In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
And then what? Everyone became wiser? People stopped building new ghettoes in which to practise the old persecutions? ' (Julian Barnes)
The only instructive history of the world is a history of love, the aspirations of love and its failures: 'those who get their satisfaction from other things,' Barnes asserts, 'are living empty lives, are posturing crabs who swagger the sea-bed in borrowed shells.' But 'If we are to oppose love
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