CONTENTS

DAVID PROFUMO's long and deeply lamented absence from these pages is explained by work on a new novel, The Weather in Iceland, which Picador will bring out in June. All who have seen it maintain it is a masterpiece. He has also been writing what is generally recognised as the country's best fishing column - in the Daily Telegraph - and another column, giving a Father's View.

ANTHONY

BURGESS,

regarded by everyone on the magazine as unquestionably the greatest and best of our senior literary figures, was born in Manchester under another name 76 years ago, of Irish stock. He may live in Italy or Monaco or Switzerland - nobody seems to know - but sometimes pops up in London, to the great delight of all . His latest novel is reviewed on p 18 by Robert Nye .

KATE KELLAWAY, a former Deputy Editor of Literary Review to which she came from the English Department of a large school of Harare, Zimbabwe, now works as a staff writer on the Observer while looking after her 18-month-old son Leo, of the long red hair .

MICHAEL COREN's last book, The Invisible Man: The Life & Liberties of H G Wells, was published in January by Bloomsbury. He is working on a life of Arthur Conan Doyle .

ALLISON PEARSON is the television critic for the Independent on Sunday.

FROM THE PULPIT 1 AusERONWAuGH

BIOGRAPHY

4 ANTHONY BuRGESS Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life Andrew

Motion 6 DENNIS SEWELL Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of

J Edgar Hoover Anthony Summers 7 DAviD PAscoE The Life ofSamuelJohnson: A Critical

Biography Robert DeMaria 8 AMANDA CRAIG Mary Renault: A Biography David Sweetrnan 10 JANET GRUBER The Lives ofBerylMarkham Errol Trzebinski

NATURAL& SUPERNATURAL 11 DAviD PROFUMO The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism Colin Spencer

12 LEWIS WoLPERT Madame Blavatsky's Baboon Peter

Washington 14 WENDY RowLAND The Beast ofExmoor Di Francis 15 J AMES RoGERS The Neandertals: Changing the Image of

Mankind Erik Trinkaus & Pat Shipman 16 DAviD V BARRETT At the Heart ofDarkness: Witchcraft, Black

Magic andSatanism Today John Parker

FICTION

ABROAD

LETTERS

GENERAL

18 RoBERT NvEA Dead Man inDeptford Anthony Burgess 19 Su SAN AucE WATKIN SA Suitable Boy Vikram Seth 20 WENDY BRANDMARK The Certificate Isaac Bashevis Singer 21 KATE KELLAWAY Ghosts John Banville 22 lRVING WEINMAN All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy 23 KATHRYN HuGHES Scar Tissue Michael Ignatieff 24 KAREN LEWI S The Imaginary Monkey Sean French 25 NICK JAMES Pompey Jonathan Meades 26 RoBERT Y ATES Odo's Hanging Peter Benson 26 KATHRYN Bu SCALL Mortal Beings Car! Lombard

27 FRANK M c LYNN Wild Thyme and Saladelle: Journeys Round

Western Provence Alexander Maitland 28 SARAH A SMITH Natural Opium: Travelling Tales Diane

Johnson 29 MARTIN VANDER WEYERFallingofftheMap Pico lyer 30 BERN ARD M c DoNAGHBeyondArarat: AJourney Through

Eastern Turkey Bettina Selby

31

33 DAviD CHI PP The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment

Anthony Lewis 35 MICHAEL CoREN Towers ofDebt: The Rise and Fall of the

Reichmanns Peter Foster

Editor: AUBERON W AUGH Deputy Editor: LoLA BussosH Business Manager& Box wallah: RosERT PosNER Chief Editorial Assistant and Deputy Manager: N ANCY SLADEK

Advertising Manager: JoNATHAN DEWLAP

General Assistant: VI CTORIA GRANT

Publisher: NAIM ATTALLAH Founding Editor: DR ANNE SMITH Cover illustration by William Rushton

Issue no. 178

LITERARY REVIEW April 1993

0