CONTENTS

JIM LEHRER is one of America's best known television broadcasters through his nightly PBS coast-tocoast programme of in-depth analysis , the MacNeii!Lehrer Newshour . We are his biggest fans in England.

ALISTAIR FORBES, who is a member of White's Club , nearly closed Literary R evievJ when a review he wrote of Anne Somerset's book , Ladies in Waiting, for a previous editor was judged by the High Court to have libelled the Countess of Dudley, aka Maureen Swanson, the Irish actress. The magazine survived and so, mysteriously, does Forbes.

JANE DUNN, author of A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf (Ca pe ), is at present spreading her fragrance throughout the state of New Mexico.

FRANCIS WHEEN resigned in protest from the Independent on Sunday as a result of what he describes as the megalomaniacal tendencies of Andreas Whittam Smith. He did so just in time for the start of the Test match season .

MICHAEL WHARTON served as a Lieutenant Colonel on the General Staff in the Indian Army during the last War. He wrote the Way of the World column in the Daily Telegraph under the pseudonym of Peter Simple for 36 years. He continues to write in the Sunday Telegraph. Richard West gave a rave review to the second volume of his autobiography, The Dubious Codicil, in January .

FROM THE PULPIT

WOMEN ON TOP

1 AUBERON WAUGH

4 KATHLEEN TY NAN The Bride of the Wind: The Life and Times of Alma Mahler Susanne Keegan 6 SARAH MAGUJRE The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath Ronald

Hayman The Haunting of Sylvia Plath Jacqueline Rose 7 ANNE SoMERSET The Six Wives of H enry VIII Alison Weir 8 FRAN CJS WH EEN Edwina Mountbauen: A Life of H er Own

Janet Morgan 10 Au sTA IR FoRBES Elizabeth I Anne Somerset 12 RosEMARY STOYLE R eflecting on Nana Bernice Chitnis 13 CHRISTJNE Ecc LES Sheer Bloody Magic (Ed) Carole Woddis

Actresses as Working Women Tracy C Davis 15 CAROLE ANGlER The Italics Are Mine Nina Berberova 15 EuzAB ETH lMLAY HiddenJoumey Andrew Harvey

CONSPIRACY & OPPRESSION

FICTION

17 CHRI S H oRRIE Ratlines Mark Aarons & John Loftus 19 MATT SEATON Shoot the Women First Eileen MacDonald 20 J uuAN DuPLAIN Deterring Democracy Noam Chomsky 22 FRA NCES WELCH Please Don't Call It Soviet Georgia Mary

Russell 23 SEB ASTIAN CHI The Gulf War and Beyond (Ed) Victoria

Brittain

24 BR YAN ArPLEYARD Talking It Over Juiian Barnes 25 CLAIR E MoNK Don Juan in the Village Jane DeLynn 26 RosEMARY STOYLE Sweet Days of Discipline Fleur Jaeggy 27 MARY Scorr Varying Degrees of Hopelessness Lucy Ellman

Quite Contrary Susannah Dunn 28 LucY SANDYS-WIN SCH MischiefChris Wilson 29 D AviD LLOYD EvAN S Slow Motion Riot Peter Blauner 30 GILL H oRN BY A Gift of Poison Andrea Newman

SUMMER LOVE

31 }ANE DuNN on First Love in Literature 33 Literary Loves , A Survey

BIOGRAPHY

36 }IM LEHRER A Question of Character: A Life ofJohn

F K ennedy Thomas C Reeves

Editor: AUBERON WAUGH Deputy Editor: LOLA BuBBOSH Subscriptions & Business Manager: ROBERT PosNER

Advertising Manager: }ONATHAN D EWLAP Chief Editorial Assistant and Deputy Manager: NANCY SLADEK

Assistant Editor: L ucy MAYCOCK

Designer: STEPHEN PARKER Publisher: NAIM ATTALLAH Founding Editor: DR AN E SMITH Cover illustration by William Rushton

I ssue no. I 57

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