Tim Stanley
Willing Accomplice?
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst
By Jeffrey Toobin
Profile 371pp £8.99 order from our bookshop
On 4 February 1974, nineteen-year-old Patty Hearst was kidnapped by a Marxist terrorist group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). On 15 April that year, Hearst was caught on surveillance video helping the SLA rob a bank in San Francisco. After more than a year on the lam, she was arrested, tried and convicted. What had happened to her between 4 February and 15 April? Hearst claims she was coerced into supporting the SLA and brainwashed into parroting its agenda. The SLA said she was an enthusiastic convert. Jeffrey Toobin, to my surprise and horror, appears to agree with her kidnappers.
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
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw
'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad