Frances Spalding
What Lies Beneath
Three Houses, Many Lives
By Gillian Tindall
Gillian Tindall is gifted with an archaeological imagination. She is haunted by the hidden or partially obscured, by traces and fragments that, if carefully investigated, can reanimate the past. She is especially good at looking at corners of cities – in previous books, Kentish Town, Southwark and Bankside – in order to discern what lies beneath. Whereas we might look with disaffection at sheet-glass office blocks, dreary industrial buildings, car parks, and wasteland dense with litter, she sees merely a palimpsest, in which old buildings have been rubbed out to make way for new. With X-ray eyes, she uncovers layers of history in all its diversity.
In Three Houses, Many Lives, the narrative is structured around three houses as they move through time. With all of them the author has had a slight or temporary association. The first is in Surrey, in Limpsfield’s High Street. Called ‘Manor House’, it may not be as old as its
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
In 1524, hundreds of thousands of peasants across Germany took up arms against their social superiors.
Peter Marshall investigates the causes and consequences of the German Peasants’ War, the largest uprising in Europe before the French Revolution.
Peter Marshall - Down with the Ox Tax!
Peter Marshall: Down with the Ox Tax! - Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War by Lyndal Roper
literaryreview.co.uk
The Soviet double agent Oleg Gordievsky, who died yesterday, reviewed many books on Russia & spying for our pages. As he lived under threat of assassination, books had to be sent to him under ever-changing pseudonyms. Here are a selection of his pieces:
Literary Review - For People Who Devour Books
Book reviews by Oleg Gordievsky
literaryreview.co.uk
The Soviet Union might seem the last place that the art duo Gilbert & George would achieve success. Yet as the communist regime collapsed, that’s precisely what happened.
@StephenSmithWDS wonders how two East End gadflies infiltrated the Eastern Bloc.
Stephen Smith - From Russia with Lucre
Stephen Smith: From Russia with Lucre - Gilbert & George and the Communists by James Birch
literaryreview.co.uk