Richard Overy
The Myth of the Master Race
The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust
By Heather Pringle
Fourth Estate 480pp £20
Remember Indiana Jones – the hunky, intrepid American professor of archaeology who battled it out on the cinema screen with ruthless, leather-coated German academics in the deserts of Egypt and the plains of Tibet? The films in which he featured were old-fashioned Boy’s Own yarns, the Nazi treasure-seekers a parody of the bad German, the stories pure fantasy. Or so it seemed.
The Nazi archaeologists did in fact exist. They pitched camp in Tibet and the Middle East; they were paid out of SS funds; they flew little swastika pennants from their tents; they did not hunt for the Ark of the Covenant, but they were looking with single-minded zeal for evidence
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
It wasn’t until 1825 that Pepys’s diary became available for the first time. How it was eventually decrypted and published is a story of subterfuge and duplicity.
Kate Loveman tells the tale.
Kate Loveman - Publishing Pepys
Kate Loveman: Publishing Pepys
literaryreview.co.uk
Arthur Christopher Benson was a pillar of the Edwardian establishment. He was supremely well connected. As his newly published diaries reveal, he was also riotously indiscreet.
Piers Brendon compares Benson’s journals to others from the 20th century.
Piers Brendon - Land of Dopes & Tories
Piers Brendon: Land of Dopes & Tories - The Benson Diaries: Selections from the Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson by Eamon Duffy & Ronald Hyam (edd)
literaryreview.co.uk
Of the siblings Gwen and Augustus John, it is Augustus who has commanded most attention from collectors and connoisseurs.
Was he really the finer artist, asks Tanya Harrod, or is it time Gwen emerged from her brother’s shadow?
Tanya Harrod - Cut from the Same Canvas
Tanya Harrod: Cut from the Same Canvas - Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell
literaryreview.co.uk