contents
october 2019 • issue 480
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 | october 2019 2
diary 1 Theodore Dalrymple
movers & shakers 6 Piers Brendon
The Mountbattens Andrew Lownie 7 V audine England
Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China Jung Chang 9 Ric hard Davenport-Hines
The Glossy Years Nicholas Coleridge
history 10 Francis Wheen
Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979–1982 Dominic Sandbrook 11 Malise R uthven
Islamic Empires: Fifteen Cities that Define a Civilization Justin Marozzi 13 Anne Cur ry
Shadow King: The Life & Death of Henry VI Lauren Johnson 14 Mic hael Goldfarb
Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847–1947 Norman Lebrecht 15 David Cr ane
Crucible: The Long End of the Great War & the Birth of a New World, 1917–1924 Charles Emmerson
number 10 16 Richard Vinen
For the Record David Cameron 18 Jo hn McTernan
The Prime Ministers Steve Richards 19 Andr ew Roberts on four new books about Churchill
literary lives 22 Seamus Perry
Inventing Edward Lear Sara Lodge 23 S arah Ditum
Becoming Beauvoir: A Life Kate Kirkpatrick 25 Alan Judd
P atrick O’Brian: A Very Private Life Nikolai Tolstoy 26 Jad Adams
T astes of Honey: The Making of Shelagh Delaney & a Cultural Revolution Selina Todd
