Jeremy Paterson
Peopling the Piazzas of Pompeii
Pompeii: The Living City
By Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 341pp £20
On a scorching summer’s day, in the very centre of Pompeii, I was accosted by a hot and bothered American who asked despairingly, ‘Is there anything radically different at that end from this end?’ The same disenchantment is reflected in a graffito in Pompeii’s café toilet, recorded by the authors of this excellent new book: ‘If I’d wanted ruins I could have gone to Kabul.’ The paintings have faded; the plaster crumbles from walls; walls themselves occasionally collapse. It takes a real act of the imagination to recreate the life that once filled the city’s streets. Ray Laurence is well qualified to make the attempt. I remember the moment when, while researching his PhD with me, he announced he was spending his time counting all the external doors in Pompeii. From what at first sight seemed a rather dubious and rebarbative task he conjured up a seductive reconstruction of the patterns of people’s movement around Pompeii, which later formed part of his Roman Pompeii: Space and Society (1994). Now he has teamed up with Alex Butterworth, a writer and dramatist, to bring the city to life in a more readily accessible and attractive fashion.
What the authors have done is to attempt to tell the story of the last twenty-five years of Pompeii’s existence in something of the style of a novel (move over, Robert Harris). The lives of individual Pompeians are reconstructed from inscriptions, graffiti, memorials, houses and decoration, and the clutter of
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
Twitter Feed
It wasn’t until 1825 that Pepys’s diary became available for the first time. How it was eventually decrypted and published is a story of subterfuge and duplicity.
Kate Loveman tells the tale.
Kate Loveman - Publishing Pepys
Kate Loveman: Publishing Pepys
literaryreview.co.uk
Arthur Christopher Benson was a pillar of the Edwardian establishment. He was supremely well connected. As his newly published diaries reveal, he was also riotously indiscreet.
Piers Brendon compares Benson’s journals to others from the 20th century.
Piers Brendon - Land of Dopes & Tories
Piers Brendon: Land of Dopes & Tories - The Benson Diaries: Selections from the Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson by Eamon Duffy & Ronald Hyam (edd)
literaryreview.co.uk
Of the siblings Gwen and Augustus John, it is Augustus who has commanded most attention from collectors and connoisseurs.
Was he really the finer artist, asks Tanya Harrod, or is it time Gwen emerged from her brother’s shadow?
Tanya Harrod - Cut from the Same Canvas
Tanya Harrod: Cut from the Same Canvas - Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell
literaryreview.co.uk