Adrian Tinniswood
Vile Bodies
Poor old Queen Anne. Fat, lame, with an obstetric history that would break the hardest of hearts: seventeen pregnancies in seventeen years, sixteen of them resulting in miscarriages, still births or infant deaths. William, Duke of Gloucester, was the only child to survive its first birthday; the apple of his mother’s eye, hailed as the saviour of Protestant England, he was hydrocephalic and died of smallpox when he was just eleven. Anne knew tragedy in her life. And she had piles. How could you not feel sorry for her?
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
In Ali Smith's "Summer", 'the coronavirus pandemic has arrived. Lockdown happens too. There are allusions to Black Lives Matter, to online abuse and radicalisation, to things so recently news that it feels shocking to find them in a novel.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/seasons-heatings
'Stevenson told W E Henley, the model for Long John Silver, it was "going to shoot up and become a star". Alas, it fizzled out like a cheap firework, as many of his projects had a tendency to do.'
Alan Taylor looks at the greatest novels never written.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-fight-to-finish
Our pre-publication copies of #OneLoveChigusa by #SojiShimada have just arrived! An homage to Osamu Tezuka from #Japan’sManOfMystery
- trans by Sir David Warren (former UK ambassador to Japan). The 6th title in the #RedCircleMinis series. Pub date: 6/08/20 #島田荘司 #手塚治虫