D J Taylor
Only Connect
Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel
By Gordon Burn
Faber & Faber 215pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
As an anatomy of the criminal mind, Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son (1984), Gordon Burn’s account of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, took some beating. ‘Anatomy of the criminal mind’ isn’t quite right, in fact, as Burn’s achievement was to construct not simply a study of an individual and the horrors he committed but a piece of dramatised sociology, in which Sutcliffe’s crimes were tracked unerringly back to the West Yorkshire environment that produced them and some of the wider assumptions – principally to do with women and violence – that lay at their core.
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
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad