contents october 2017 • issue 458
Editor Nancy Sladek Deputy Editor Tom Fleming Assistant Editors Frank Brinkley • David Gelber Contributing Editors Jonathan Beckman Michael Burleigh • Sara Wheeler • Philip Womack Advertising Manager Terry Finnegan Classified Advertising David Sturge Marketing Manager Katherine Bogden Bayard 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 2017 2
diary 5 Sam Leith literary lives 6 A N Wilson
Mr Lear: A Life of Art & Nonsense Jenny Uglow 7 Jer emy Treglown
Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time Hilary Spurling 9 C hristian Lorentzen
The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump – Essays & Reportage, 1986–2016 Martin Amis history 10 David Biale
Be longing: The Story of the Jews 1492–1900 Simon Schama 12 Mar y Wellesley
Queens of the Conquest: England’s Medieval Queens 1066–1167 Alison Weir 13 Car oline Finkel
The Sultan’s Organ Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy 15 Anna Kea y
To Catch a King: Charles II’s Great Escape Charles Spencer 16 Jo hn Bew
Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800–1906 David Cannadine 18 David S tevenson
The Internationalists and their Plan to Outlaw War Oona A Hathaway & Scott J Shapiro secessionists 20 John Carlin
The Struggle for Catalonia: Rebel Politics in Spain Raphael Minder 22 P aul Bew
Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life Malachi O’Doherty poem 23 Sean O’Brien ‘From the Cherry Hills’
cities 24 Christopher Woodward
The Last London: True Fictions from an Unreal City Iain Sinclair
