Ian Whitcomb
Tycoon of Teen
Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector
By Mick Brown
Bloomsbury 512pp £18.99
The career of this legendary record producer has already been covered in many books, so do we need another? I myself have written about the eccentric self-styled ‘genius’ who, in the twilight before Beatle sunshine, conjured up a mighty tsunami of sound to be enjoyed on cheap phonographs and car radios by adolescents of body or brain.
‘Little symphonies for the kids’, he said he was making. He called on his arrangers to throw in a little Strauss here and some Wagner there while pushing his engineers to up the volume till stomachs turned and eardrums burst. Somewhere in the swell were girlie-cute black voices, but none
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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
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Piers Brendon compares Benson’s journals to others from the 20th century.
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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