William Palmer
The Queen’s Missing Head
The Error World: An Affair with Stamps
By Simon Garfield
Faber & Faber 247pp £14.99
Like most boys of the 1950s I collected stamps. For a brief while I joined, at the age of twelve, a stamp club. Even at that early age I could recognise that some of the adult members were rather odd people. They were driven collectors, obsessed with the minutiae of differences and errors in stamps. Simon Garfield is one such collector and his new book succeeds, against all the odds, in making his mania interesting and, to a degree, comprehensible.
The book opens in 2006 with Garfield, aged forty-seven, in mid-life crisis and on the verge of having to sell his collection to fund a divorce. There are only three reasons, he tells us, why the auction houses thrive – divorce, debt, and death. He had started collecting stamps from
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
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm