Gerard Baker
Saint Ronald
The Reagan Diaries
By Douglas Brinkley (ed)
HarperCollins 767pp £30
Since Richard Crossman first spilled the beans on his Cabinet colleagues back in the 1960s, political diaries have become a rich resource for historians and a potent new weapon in the internal warfare that is modern democratic government.
For scholars and interested observers, subsequent publication of the contemporaneous observations of policymakers offers a chance to reconsider the context of long-familiar political events. For the diarists, they serve a much more important purpose. Like unexploded bombs, timed to detonate after their writers have left office, diaries can excoriate critics, punish enemies and deride turncoats, while all the time offering ringing self-validation of every decision made by the author in office.
In the US the revealing political diary has played a smaller role in modern political history than it has in Britain. Lyndon B Johnson famously taped all his White House conversations – and some of his own observational monologues – for later release, and so did Richard Nixon until the
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
This and two more newly available pieces from our October 1984 issue in our From the Archives newsletter. Sign up on our website so you never miss another dispatch.
Congratulations to @HanKangOfficial, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024.
We've lifted the paywall on Joanna Kavenna's review of The White Book from November 2017.
Joanna Kavenna - Carte Blanche
Joanna Kavenna: Carte Blanche - The White Book by Han Kang (Translated by Deborah Smith)
literaryreview.co.uk
Few surveys of British art exist. Those that do have given disproportionate space to recent trends and neglected the 150 years between Hogarth and Turner.
@robinsimonbaj examines what launched British artists of this era into the European stratosphere.
Robin Simon - The Wright Stuff
Robin Simon: The Wright Stuff - The Invention of British Art by Bendor Grosvenor
literaryreview.co.uk