Michael Holman
Sowing the Seeds of Growth
Famine & Foreigners: Ethiopia since Live Aid
By Peter Gill
Oxford University Press 280pp £14.99
Not long before his death last year Norman Borlaug, the US agronomist responsible for what became known as the green revolution, was asked what had been the greatest disappointment in a seventy-year career that spanned the globe. He didn't hesitate. ‘Africa,’ he replied.
His answer was not surprising.
Having helped transform India's agriculture through improved seed, better techniques and judicious use of fertiliser, he tried to replicate his success in Africa. His efforts were in vain. The problems have proved intractable.
Some five decades after independence, one in three of the 700 million people living
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In 1524, hundreds of thousands of peasants across Germany took up arms against their social superiors.
Peter Marshall investigates the causes and consequences of the German Peasants’ War, the largest uprising in Europe before the French Revolution.
Peter Marshall - Down with the Ox Tax!
Peter Marshall: Down with the Ox Tax! - Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War by Lyndal Roper
literaryreview.co.uk
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