Jeremy Lewis
Saint Victor
How is it possible that even the noisiest of publishers can merit a biography of the length normally reserved for Queen Victoria or members of the Bloomsbury Group - still more so when the gentleman in question was a byword for high-minded humbuggery, tucking into slap-up meals at the Savoy while urging his fellow citizens to tighten their belts to stave off starvation in post-war Germany, and loudly proclaiming brotherly love while trampling roughshod over those with whom he had dealings? Part of the answer, of course, is that - as the founder of the Left Book Club and a forceful advocate of left-wing and humanitarian causes - VG was a controversial and highly influential public figure; and by the end of this entertaining and altogether gripping book it's hard to suppress a certain fondness for a bully and tyrant who was also, it seems, a genuinely as well as self-avowedly good and kindly man.
VG was born in Maida Vale in 1893. His father was a hard-working jeweller: they shared a love of music, but early on VG showed signs of abandoning Judaism for his own composite creed - part Judaism, part Christianity, with bits of Blake and Shelley thrown
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
'Humans may be the supremely musical animal, but, with or without us, this is a musical planet.'
@MathewJLyons on how music on earth began.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/symphony-of-a-thousand-millennia
'In 2007, German scientists analysed the soil of this lunar landscape and found that 17 per cent of its weight was made up of arsenic. The ground wasn’t poisoned – it was poison.'
http://ow.ly/Ck7j50Er3mu
'Rivalries are intense and dangerous, and someone has to die.'
@NJCooper_crime on new thrillers by @HenryCPorter, @k_faulkner, @annafbailey, @mserinkelly, @JoelDicker, @AlanJParks, @whartonswords and more.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/april-2021-crime-round-up