THIS MONTH’S PULPIT is written by D J Taylor, a novelist and biographer. His last novel, Ask Alice, will be published in paperback in the spring. A new novel, At the Chime of a City Clock, is out in March.
JOHN GRAY’s most recent book is Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings (Allen Lane).
BRYAN APPLEYARD writes for The Sunday Times, blogs and is working on a book which he cannot yet explain.
ELAINE SHOWALTER is Professor Emerita of English at Princeton University. Her latest book is A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (Little, Brown).
FREDERIC RAPHAEL is finishing a novel called Final Demands (the third in his The Glittering Prizes trilogy), to be published in the spring.
TOM HOLLAND is the author of Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic. He is currently writing a history of late antiquity and the coming of Islam.
DOUGLAS MURRAY is an author and the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion.
JOHN SUTHERLAND is the Lord Northcliffe Professor of English Emeritus at UCL. His bibliomemoir, Magic Moments, was published by Profile Books in 2008.
TOM PAULIN’s version of Medea opens at the Oxford Playhouse in February.
ANDREW ROBERTS’s latest book is The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Allen Lane).
RICHARD OVERY’s The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars was published in May and his 1939: Countdown to War was published in August, both by Allen Lane.
CAROLYNE LARRINGTON is a Tutor in medieval English at St John’s College, Oxford, where she also teaches Old Norse. Her latest book is King Arthur’s Enchantresses, published by IB Tauris.
CONTENTS
PULPIT
GLOBAL WARNINGS
LITERARY LIVES
EXTRACT
HISTORY
BIOGRAPHY & LETTERS
ANCIENT WORLD
WORDS, WORDS, WORDS
1
DJTAYLOR
4
5 7
9
BRYAN APPLEYARD Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto Stewart Brand JOHN GRAY In Defence of the Enlightenment Tzvetan Todorov DAVID CESARANI Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity Daniel Jonah Goldhagen DOUGLAS MURRAY The Cartoons that Shook the World Jytte Klausen
11
13 14 16
17
19
FREDERIC RAPHAEL How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer Sarah Bakewell ELAINE SHOWALTER Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor Brad Gooch JOHN SUTHERLAND Cheever: A Life Blake Bailey TOM PAULIN The English Opium Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey Robert Morrison ANDREW LYCETT The Devil is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley Phil Baker MIRANDA FRANCE Small Memories: A Memoir José Saramago
20
WILLIAM STYRON ‘Elobey, Annobón, and Corisco’
21
22 24
25 26
ANDREW ROBERTS England’s Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy 1940–1942 Colin Smith PAUL ADDISON Family Britain, 1951–1957 David Kynaston RICHARD OVERY The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 Christopher Andrew JONATHAN BECKMAN The Queen’s Necklace Antal Szerb CAROLYNE LARRINGTON The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of the Vikings Robert Ferguson
28
30 31 32
34
PAUL JOHNSON Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: The Official Biography William Shawcross DOMINIC SANDBROOK The Clinton Tapes Taylor Branch DIARMAID MACCULLOCH Augustine of Hippo Henry Chadwick MICHAEL GLOVER Vincent van Gogh: The Letters (Edd) Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten & Nienke Bakker RICHARD DAVENPORT-HINES The Letters of T S Eliot, Volume Two: 1923–1925 (Edd) Valerie Eliot & Hugh Haughton
36
38 39
TOM HOLLAND The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy Adrienne Mayor PETER JONES Ancient Greece: A History in Eleven Cities Paul Cartledge CHRISTOPHER HART On the Spartacus Road Peter Stothard
40 42
JEREMY LEWIS ON A SELECTION OF TALES FROM LITERARY LIFE DAVID PROFUMO The Untranslatables C J Moore
Editor: NANCY SLADEK Deputy Editor: TOM FLEMING Editor-at-Large: JEREMY LEWIS Assistant Editor: JONATHAN BECKMAN
Contributing Editors: MICHAEL BURLEIGH, SARA WHEELER,
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. 372
LITERARY REVIEW Dec 09 / Jan 10
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