contents
august 2019 • issue 478
Editor Nancy Sladek Deputy Editor Tom Fleming Assistant Editors Frank Brinkley • David Gelber Contributing Editors Jonathan Beckman Michael Burleigh • Sara Wheeler • Philip Womack General Assistant Michael Delgado Marketing Jared Spears • Constance Watson Advertising Manager Terry Finnegan Classified Advertising David Sturge Founding Editor Dr Anne Smith Cover Illustration Chris Riddell
The Literary Review, incorporating Quarto, is published monthly from: 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • ISSN 0144 4360 Tel: 020 7437 9392 • editorial@literaryreview.co.uk letters@literaryreview.co.uk 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 subscriptions@warnersgroup.co.uk All advertising enquiries to: Terry Finnegan, Literary Review, 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • Tel: 020 7437 9392 terry@literaryreview.co.uk • david.sturge@btopenworld.com Printed in the United Kingdom by: Henry Ling Ltd, at the Dorset Press, 90 Prince of Wales Road, Dorchester DT1 1PR • Tel: 01305 251 066 Distributed to newsagents worldwide by: Seymour Distribution Ltd • Tel: 020 7429 4000 Distributed to bookshops by: Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN • Tel: 020 8986 4854 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 | august 2019 2
diary 1 D J Taylor
biography 6 Richard Carwardine
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom David W Blight 8 Levi Roach
King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne Janet L Nelson 9 Piers Brendon
Enoch Powell: Politics & Ideas in Modern Britain Paul Corthorn 11 Norma Clarke
Mrs Delany: A Life Clarissa Campbell Orr 12 Stephen Walsh
Beethoven: The Relentless Revolutionary John Clubbe
history 14 John Keay
Partition Voices: Untold British Stories Kavita Puri 15 Fergus Butler-Gallie
Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune: How Younger Sons Made Their Way in Jane Austen’s England Rory Muir 16 David Pryce-Jones
Captain Gill ’s Walking Stick: The True Story of the Sinai Murders Saul Kelly 17 Michael Burleigh
Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Definitive History of Secret CIA Assassins, Armies & Operators Annie Jacobsen 18 Patrick Scrivenor
Madame Fourcade’s Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler Lynne Olson • A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of WWII’s Most Dangerous Spy, Virginia Hall Sonia Purnell • The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, & the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz Jack Fairweather
literature 20 Jay Parini
September 1, 1939: A Biography of a Poem Ian Sansom 21 Allan Massie
Fabulous Monsters: Dracula, Alice, Superman, & Other Literary Friends Alberto Manguel
homo sapiens 24 Matthew Cobb
Superior: The Return of Race Science Angela Saini • Skin Deep: Journeys in the Divisive Science of Race Gavin Evans
