Bryan Appleyard
The Ruins of The Future
'THE WORLD', RUNS John Reader's first sentence, 'is not short of books about cities.' This is true but it's a bad start. Most people scanning that line in a bookshop would pass on. It gets worse. At the foot of the first page he asks, 'If so many books on cities already exist, why burden the shelves with another?' Okay, okay, so why?
Well. I like to think this one is different. It commends the magnificence of great cities, as other admirers do; and deplores their failings no less than any polemicist might; but beyond that, it searches for the context - ecological and functional - that is common to the phenomenon of
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
For two decades the Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote an anonymous column for a literary journal, inviting writers to send in their writing for her to critique.
Joanna Kavenna peruses her feedback.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/have-you-considered-accountancy
Mazower turns 'the Greek Revolution from a simplistic, two-dimensional story into a vast colourful fresco populated by a cast of characters that is astonishing in its diversity.'
Stathis N Kalyvas on a new book about the Greek Revolution of 1821.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/freedom-or-death
'The subtitle of this biography, "Never a Dull Moment", refers to the momentous events of George V’s reign, but the book’s real surprise is that its author, having laboured through the king’s deadly diaries, does not find him dull.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/colonel-blimp-enthroned