Gillian Tindall
Silly Young Things
To Bed with Grand Music
By Marghanita Laski
Persephone Books 197pp £10
Some twenty-odd years ago, when Marghanita Laski was old, redoubtable and a regular on Radio 3’s Critics’ Forum, I occasionally coincided with her on the programme. I recall her expressing disdain for an intellectual Hungarian film on the grounds that there was nothing interesting in ‘the sexual activities of silly young people’. There was a tiny pause, during which I and the other contributors wondered where this left Romeo and Juliet and Anna Karenina. But I was especially intrigued because I happened to know that Laski herself had once written a corrosively authentic and daring novel about the goings on of a silly young wife in wartime London.
The book, out of print for sixty years, has not been in the canon of distinguished and original Laski works (The Victorian Chaise-Longue, Little Boy Lost, her non-fictional studies of religion and ecstasy), because she wrote it under a pseudonym in the Second World War. Why? The historian
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
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk