William Palmer
The Ragman’s Trumpet
How about this as a case study for the tabloids? Thirteen-year-old boy, black, rowdy, bunking off school, drinking, carrying a gun, his mother a prostitute. Lock him up and throw away the key? The boy’s name was Louis Armstrong, and Thomas Brothers’s Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans (WW Norton 386pp £17.99) deals with his youth and the city that produced him.
The legend is that jazz originated in New Orleans. Scholarly argument has tried to cast doubt on this theory but, true or not, a disproportionate number of great musicians came from the city, and its diverse racial and cultural mix made it ‘stunningly fertile for music’ and certainly
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
'"The Last Colony" is, among other things, part of the campaign to shift the British position through political pressure. As with all good propaganda, Sands’s case is based in truth, if not the whole of it.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/empire-strikes-back
'To her enemies she was the alien temptress who led Charles I away from the "true religion" of Protestantism and towards royal absolutism.'
Lucy Hughes-Hallett reviews @LeandadeLisle's 'colourful', 'persuasive' new biography of Henrietta Maria.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/royalist-generalissima
'Empathy is our moral portal gun, and it jams from underuse.'
Don Paterson on Portal 2, catching Covid on the Eurostar, and rereading Ian Hamilton’s 'Against Oblivion'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/portal-agony