contents february 2017 • issue 450 Editor Nancy Sladek Deputy Editor Tom Fleming Editor-at-Large Jeremy Lewis Assistant Editors Frank Brinkley • David Gelber Editorial Assistant Sophie Baggott 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 | february 2017 2
pulpit 1 Nicholas Murray biography & diaries 6 Jonathan Rée
Montaigne: A Life Philippe Desan 8 Caroline Moorehead
Claretta: Mussolini’s Last Lover R J B Bosworth 9 Donald Rayfield
The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard Ivan Chistyakov 11 Alison Flood
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life Ruth Franklin 12 Tom Fort
The Man Who Ate the Zoo: Frank Buckland, Forgotten Hero of Natural History Richard Girling history 14 Philip Parker
Athelstan Tom Holland • Æthelred the Unready Levi Roach 16 Jessie Childs
Young & Damned & Fair: The Life & Tragedy of Catherine Howard at the Court of Henry VIII Gareth Russell 17 Richard Overy
The Locomotive of War: Money, Empire, Power & Guilt Peter Clarke 18 Simon Heffer
Heligoland: Britain, Germany, & the Struggle for the North Sea Jan Rüger 20 Saul David
Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa Lawrence James poets 21 Robert Crawford
The Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics & Madness of Ezra Pound Daniel Swift 22 Nicholas Roe
Deaths of the Poets Paul Farley & Michael Symmons Roberts rogues 24 Bijan Omrani
The Tartan Turban: In Search of Alexander Gardner John Keay 25 Piers Brendon
Gayer-Anderson: The Life & Afterlife of the Irish Pasha Louise Foxcroft 27 Adrian Tinniswood
The Nine Lives of John Ogilby Alan Ereira
