contents october 2016 • issue 447 Editor Nancy Sladek Deputy Editor Tom Fleming Editor-at-Large Jeremy Lewis Assistant Editors Frank Brinkley • David Gelber Editorial Assistant Francesca Carington Contributing Editors Jonathan Beckman Michael Burleigh • Sara Wheeler • Philip Womack Advertising Manager Terry Finnegan Classified Advertising David Sturge Marketing Manager Katherine Bogden Bayard Founding Father Auberon Waugh Founding Editor Dr Anne Smith Cover Illustration Chris Riddell

The Literary Review, incorporating Quarto, is published monthly from: 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • Tel: 020 7437 9392 Fax: 020 7734 1844 • ISSN 0144 4360 © 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 All advertising enquiries to: Terry Finnegan, Literary Review, 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • Tel: 020 7437 9392 Printed in the United Kingdom by: Henry Ling Ltd, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester DT1 1HD • Tel: 01305 251 066 Distributed to newsagents worldwide by: COMAG Specialist, Tavistock Works, Tavistock Rd, West Drayton, Middlesex, UB7 7QX • Tel: 01895 433 800 Distributed to bookshops by: Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN • Tel: 020 8986 4854 Subscriptions: subscriptions@warnersgroup.co.uk Editorial: editorial@literaryreview.co.uk www.literaryreview.co.uk • @lit_review 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 | october 2016 2

pulpit 1 Dominic Green biography & letters 6 Mary Kenny

Fascist in the Family: The Tragedy of John Beckett MP Francis Beckett • Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce Colin Holmes 8 Kevin Jackson

Kenneth Clark: Life, Art & ‘Civilisation’ James Stourton 9 Andrew Crumey

Einstein’s Greatest Mistake: A Biography David Bodanis 11 Harry Mount

Dashing for the Post: The Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor Adam Sisman (ed)

russia 12 Douglas Smith

Lenin on the Train Catherine Merridale • Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917 Helen Rappaport 14 Donald Rayfield

Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph & Tragedy 1905–1953 Simon Ings 15 Michael Prodger

The Empress of Art: Catherine the Great & the Transformation of Russia Susan Jaques • The Russian Canvas: Painting in Imperial Russia, 1757–1881 Rosalind P Blakesley 18 Rupert Christiansen

Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today Simon Morrison history 20 Anne Somerset

Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe Sarah Gristwood 21 Philip Parker

Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages & the Old Norse Sagas Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough 22 Adrian Tinniswood

Royal Renegades: The Children of Charles I & the English Civil Wars Linda Porter 24 Ian McBride

The Irish Enlightenment Michael Brown 25 Andrew Roberts on four books about Winston Churchill