John Adamson
Pursuit of the Pastoral
Earls of Paradise: England and the Dream of Perfection
By Adam Nicolson
HarperPress 298pp £25
Success at the Tudor and Stuart courts was a notoriously accident-prone attainment. In the favoured contemporary simile, those high-fliers who ‘soared Icarus-like’ towards the monarchical sun all too often ended up plummeting earthwards, with ignominious and often fatal results. Envy and enmity attended any great courtier’s rise. There was never a shortage of jealous rivals ready to hasten his fall.
Every now and again, however, there was one who – with intelligence, ruthlessness, skill and luck – managed to prosper in these rarefied and hazardous altitudes. And at the English court, few families achieved more stratospheric, or long-lasting, prosperity than the Herberts, Earls of Pembroke. The founder of the dynasty,
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The Soviet double agent Oleg Gordievsky, who died yesterday, reviewed many books on Russia & spying for our pages. As he lived under threat of assassination, books had to be sent to him under ever-changing pseudonyms. Here are a selection of his pieces:
Literary Review - For People Who Devour Books
Book reviews by Oleg Gordievsky
literaryreview.co.uk
The Soviet Union might seem the last place that the art duo Gilbert & George would achieve success. Yet as the communist regime collapsed, that’s precisely what happened.
@StephenSmithWDS wonders how two East End gadflies infiltrated the Eastern Bloc.
Stephen Smith - From Russia with Lucre
Stephen Smith: From Russia with Lucre - Gilbert & George and the Communists by James Birch
literaryreview.co.uk
The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945 has long been regarded as a historical watershed – but did it mark the start of a new era or the culmination of longer-term trends?
Philip Snow examines the question.
Philip Snow - Death from the Clouds
Philip Snow: Death from the Clouds - Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan by Richard Overy
literaryreview.co.uk