Richard Godwin
Vengeful Victorians
The promotional material that comes with Michael Cox’s debut novel serves notice of a worrying trend. Last year, having paid Cox a record £500,000 advance, publishers John Murray embarked on a ‘ground-breaking research Project’. They sent out 600 copies to ordinary readers, inviting them to submit their responses.
‘Fantastic, awesome, first-rate, marvellous, sensational, superb, stunning, impressive and amazing’, opined S Rowe of Wigton, Cumbria. ‘It was more Wilkie Collins than Wilkie Collins himself!’ quipped an anonymous London female, aged 55–64. J Herron of Belfast suspected the novel’s hero, Edward Glyver, ‘may well become a stock character in 21st century literature’. These citizen critics will do us out of a job!
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'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad