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Editor Nancy Sladek Deputy Editor Tom Fleming Assistant Editor David Gelber Contributing Editors Jonathan Beckman Michael Burleigh • Sara Wheeler • Philip Womack Print & Circulation Manager Mark Jones Marketing Manager Constance Watson Advertising Manager Terry Finnegan Classified Advertising David Sturge Founding Editor Dr Anne Smith Cover Illustration Chris Riddell
The Literary Review, incorporating Quarto, is published monthly from: 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • ISSN 0144 4360 Tel: 020 7437 9392 • editorial@literaryreview.co.uk letters@literaryreview.co.uk All subscription enquiries and changes of address to: Literary Review Subscriptions, The Maltings, West Street, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH • Tel: +44 (0) 1778 395 165 subscriptions@warnersgroup.co.uk All advertising enquiries to: Terry Finnegan, Literary Review, 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • Tel: 020 7437 9392 terry@literaryreview.co.uk • david.sturge@btopenworld.com Print by: CPUK Print Publishing Ltd, www.cp-uk.co.uk Distributed to newsagents worldwide by: Seymour Distribution Ltd • Tel: 020 7429 4000 Distributed to bookshops by: Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN • Tel: 020 8986 4854 Designed by Cog Design Literary Review is set in Adobe Caslon and Janet. The latter is a digitisation of an engraved typeface designed by the artist and typographer Reynolds Stone, and named after his wife.
Literary Review | march 2024 2
diary Nicholas Shakespeare foreign parts Mark Galeotti
The Showman: The Inside Story of the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky Simon Shuster Owen Bennett-Jones
The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India Alpa Shah Rory McCarthy
The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979–2003 Steve Coll Adam Brookes
Narcotopia: In Search of the Asian Drug Cartel That Outwitted the CIA Patrick Winn history Philip Snow
Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia Gary J Bass Zareer Masani
Queen Victoria & Her Prime Ministers: A Personal History Anne Somerset Peter Marshall
The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas Müntzer: The Life and Times of an Early German Revolutionary Andrew Drummond Barnaby Crowcroft
Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism Philip J Stern Richard Vinen
Women and the Miners’ Strike, 1984–1985 Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite & Nathalie Thomlinson • The British Miner in the Age of De-Industrialization: A Political and Cultural History Jörg Arnold David Abulafia
How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History Josephine Quinn biography Norma Clarke
Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence Avril Horner Graham Daseler
Kubrick: An Odyssey Robert P Kolker & Nathan Abrams Lucy Moore
Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan Ruby Lal