William Palmer
Summer In A Jar
The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us
By Bee Wilson
John Murray 308pp £14.99 order from our bookshop
THE BEE HAS been held up as the model of the diligent, unselfish worker for many centuries and its image appears in everything from cave paintings to modern advertising. Ohio, that state of the industrious, has taken the beehive as its emblem; Antoni Gaudi, the architect, absorbed the parabolic arch of the natural honeycomb into his buildings. The busy bee’s chief product echoes in our language: honeymoon, honeydew, honey-traps, honeysuckle. Beeswax has provided polish, witches’ wax-dolls, and Madame Tussaud’s models. No other insect has found such a place in life or art. Ants, as Bee Wilson points out, may work as hard, ‘but, at the end of it all, what do they produce? An anthill.’
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
Don't forget to enter the competition to win a year's @royalacademy membership and a year's subscription to Literary Review.
Entries close on the 18th December.
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/page/ra-competition-literary-review-2019
'Together the Marcoses established a new style of deluxe autocracy, one characterised by glitz and kleptomaniac graft.'
Peter Conrad on Lauren Greenfield's new documentary about Imelda Marcos, 'The Kingmaker'.
http://ow.ly/FFSg50xsH7D
Thrillers by @sophiehannahCB1, @ccmacdwriter, Rebecca Wait, @deborah_masson, @helensedgwick, Chris Hammer, @stephycha, @McCrumMark, @LesleyKara and @BarryForshaw3.
PLUS, @NJCooper_crime picks her favourite crime novels of 2019.
http://ow.ly/YjiP50xrsnl