Dennis Sewell
The Politics of Piety
Living History
By Hillary Rodham Clinton
Headline 562pp £20
The Clinton Wars: An Insider's Account of the White House Years
By Sidney Blumenthal
Viking 822pp £25
'President Mugabe said little during my courtesy visit with him in the presidential residence,' reports the former First Lady of the United States, '...and he periodically broke into giggles for no apparent reason. I left believing he was dangerously unstable and hoping he would relinquish power.' And before the manic cackling started? Had she arrived believing" that the crazed dictator's record of genocide made him merely a kind of Mandela with attitude? Hillary doesn't say; she just leaves the reader wondering what it was that Mugabe found so rib-ticklingly funny.
The self-importance of being earnest, I'll warrant. If you didn't laugh at Hillary's invincible rectitude, you'd have to cry. 'It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small,' she solemnly instructs
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Paul Gauguin kept house with a teenage ‘wife’ in French Polynesia, islands whose culture he is often accused of ransacking for his art.
@StephenSmithWDS asks if Gauguin is still worth looking at.
Stephen Smith - Art of Rebellion
Stephen Smith: Art of Rebellion - Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux
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‘I have fond memories of discussing Lorca and the state of Andalusian theatre with Antonio Banderas as Lauren Bacall sat on the dressing-room couch.’
@henryhitchings on Simon Russell Beale.
Henry Hitchings - The Play’s the Thing
Henry Hitchings: The Play’s the Thing - A Piece of Work: Playing Shakespeare & Other Stories by Simon Russell Beale
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We are saddened to hear of the death of Fredric Jameson.
Here, from 1983, is Terry Eagleton’s review of The Political Unconscious.
Terry Eagleton - Supermarket of the Mind
Terry Eagleton: Supermarket of the Mind - The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act by Fredric Jameson
literaryreview.co.uk