contents
august 2018 • issue 467
Editor Nancy Sladek Deputy Editor Tom Fleming Assistant Editors Frank Brinkley • David Gelber Editorial Assistant Paloma van Tol 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: Seymour Distribution Ltd • Tel: 0207 429 4000 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.
Jessica Mann, 1937–2018
We were sad to learn of the death of Jessica Mann in July, at the age of eighty. Jessica had been a regular contributor to the magazine for twenty-five years and started writing her monthly crime column in 2006. Her pithy summaries and sharp assessments of the latest crime novels were beloved of Literary Review readers. On the rare occasions when she took a month off, we would unfailingly receive messages from readers seeking assurances that her column would return. In spite of ill health, she continued to make regular visits to the Literary Review office to collect the latest batch of crime novels up to the time of her death, undaunted by the steep flight of stairs and the tenebrous hallway. She will be hugely missed by all at Literary Review. Readers might like to turn to page 59 for an appreciation of her life by Natasha Cooper.
Literary Review | august 2018 2
diary 1 Christopher Howse
seafarers 5 Robert Mayhew
Endeavour: The Ship & the Attitude That Changed the World Peter Moore 6 Douglas Smith
A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate ‘Pallada’ Edyta M Bojanowska
ages of empire 8 John Keay
The Last Englishmen Deborah Baker 9 Frank Prochaska
The Lion and the Eagle: The Interaction of the British & American Empires 1783–1972 Kathleen Burk 11 Bijan Omrani
Afghanistan in the Age of Empires Farrukh Husain 12 Sarah Bradford
The Imperial Tea Party Frances Welch
literary lives 14 Frances Wilson
The Warm South: How the Mediterranean Shaped the British Imagination Robert Holland 16 John Sutherland
Robert Graves: From Great War Poet to ‘Good-bye to All That’ (1895-1929) Jean Moorcroft Wilson 17 Emma Smith
Imagining Shakespeare’s Wife Katherine West Scheil 18 Andrew Lycett
Autumn in Venice: Ernest Hemingway & His Last Muse Andrea di Robilant 20 Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Writers and Their Mothers Dale Salwak (ed)
poem 19 John Burnside ‘Affianced by Oath’
britain 21 Thomas Shippey
Edmund: In Search of England’s Lost King Francis Young 22 Piers Brendon
The Rise and Fall of the British Nation David Edgerton
