Sara Wheeler
Tips About Icebergs
Cold is the new hot, judging by this avalanche of books on polar economics. Until recently the Arctic has languished in the southern imagination as a romantic hinterland of bergs and pack, a region that made headlines only when Santa mounted his sleigh. Now scarcely a day goes by without a media story relating a fresh bout of geopolitical manoeuvring north of the Arctic Circle. Why?
The four titles under review reveal all. A warming climate has triggered a race for millions of tons of hydrocarbons previously locked beneath the Arctic Ocean’s icy lid. All these books cover roughly the same ground, focusing on the larger economic and political role of the Arctic as
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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