CONTENTS
THIS MONTH’S PULPIT is written by Carole Angier. She is a biographer of Jean Rhys and Primo Levi. She is currently co-writing with Sally Cline The Arvon Book of Life Writing.
JOHN GRAY’s most recent book is Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings (Allen Lane).
RICHARD OVERY’s The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars was published last month by Allen Lane. 1939: Countdown to War will be published in August.
CAROLINE MOOREHEAD’s Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution was published in March by Chatto & Windus.
PAUL ADDISON is an Honorary Fellow of the School of History and Classics at the University of Edinburgh. His most recent book is Churchill: The Unexpected Hero (OUP).
HUGH HAUGHTON is the author of The Poetry of Derek Mahon (OUP, 2007) and co-editor (with Valerie Eliot) of Volume II of The Letters of T S Eliot (to be published later this year). He teaches English at the University of York.
BEN WILSON’s What Price Liberty? was published last month by Faber.
GILLIAN TINDALL’s Footprints in Paris was published last month by Chatto & Windus.
JESSICA MANN, with Charles Thomas, is the author of Godrevy Light (Twelveheads Press), an illustrated history of the iconic lighthouse in St Ives Bay that inspired many Cornish painters, and writers such as Virginia Woolf.
ANDREW LAMBERT is the author of Nelson: Britannia’s God of War, and Admirals; his new book, Franklin: Tragic Hero of Polar Navigation, is published next month by Faber.
PULPIT
BIOGRAPHY
LETTERS
HISTORY
LITERARY LIVES
FOREIGN PARTS
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CAROLE ANGIER
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PAUL ADDISON Harold Macmillan Charles Williams JONATHAN MIRSKY The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China Jay Taylor FRANK MCLYNN High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood Donald Spoto PAUL JOHNSON Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2001–2004 (Ed) Lawrence Goldman
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JOHN GRAY Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960 Isaiah Berlin (Edd) Henry Hardy & Jennifer Holmes HUGH HAUGHTON The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1929–1940 (Edd) Martha Dow Fehsenfeld & Lois More Overbeck
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RICHARD OVERY Stalin’s Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky Bertrand M Patenaude SIMON HEFFER D-Day: The Battle for Normandy Antony Beevor DAVID STAFFORD 1938: Hitler’s Gamble Giles MacDonogh CHRISTOPHER KELLY Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe Peter Heather LESLIE MITCHELL Pistols at Dawn: Two Hundred Years of Political Rivalry from Pitt & Fox to Blair & Brown John Campbell
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CLAIRE HARMAN Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment William McCarthy CATHERINE PETERS Eminent Lives: George Eliot Brenda Maddox PHILIP DAVIS Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing Stephen J Zipperstein P J KAVANAGH Dreaming of Babylon: The Life and Times of Ralph Hodgson John Harding ION TREWIN Max Reinhardt: A Life in Publishing Judith Adamson
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ADOLF WOOD South Africa’s Brave New World R W Johnson After Mandela Alec Russell A Legacy of Liberation Mark Gevisser MARY KILLEN From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island Lorna Goodison The Dead Yard: Tales of Modern Jamaica Ian Thomson PETER JONES The Empire Stops Here: A Journey Along the Frontiers of the Roman World Philip Parker JOHN KEAY Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity Sam Miller THOMAS WIDE Out of Steppe: The Lost Peoples of Central Asia Daniel Metcalfe
Editor: NANCY SLADEK Deputy Editor: TOM FLEMING Editor-at-Large: JEREMY LEWIS Assistant Editor: JONATHAN BECKMAN
Contributing Editors: SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE, PHILIP WOMACK
Advertising Manager: TERRY FINNEGAN Classified Advertising: DAVID STURGE
Founding Editor: DR ANNE SMITH Founding Father: AUBERON WAUGH
Cover illustration by Chris Riddell
Issue no. 366
LITERARY REVIEW June 2009
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