Justin Marozzi
Tyranny of Trifles
Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey through Islamic Lands
By Aatish Taseer
Canongate 324pp £14.99
A message to married men having extra-marital affairs: beware of fathering a child with your mistress and then abandoning them. One day said child may discover literary inclinations and write a book that you may find humiliating in the extreme. Never mind the old adage. Stranger to History is a case of hell hath no fury like filial scorn.
Aatish Taseer is marvellously suited to writing this book about personal identity, religion and a quest to make sense of his past. With a Pakistani politician father and Indian journalist mother he neatly straddles the divide that Partition engraved across the subcontinent. And several years studying and working
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
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