contents
february 2021 • issue 493
Editor Nancy Sladek Deputy Editor Tom Fleming Assistant Editors Frank Brinkley • David Gelber Contributing Editors Jonathan Beckman Michael Burleigh • Sara Wheeler • Philip Womack Editorial & Marketing Assistant Michael Delgado Marketing Manager 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 Print by: CPUK Print Publishing Ltd, www.cp-uk.co.uk 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 | february 2021 2
diary 1 Mick Herron
biography 6 Charles Darwent
Francis Bacon: Revelations Mark Stevens & Annalyn Swan 7 Kevin Jackson
Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker David Mikics 8 David Lough
Statesman of Europe: A Life of Sir Edward Grey T G Otte 10 Donald Rayfield
Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life Alex Christofi 11 Jonathan Meades
The Sea View Has Me Again: Uwe Johnson in Sheerness Patrick Wright
foreign parts 13 Owen Matthews
A Coup in Turkey: A Tale of Democracy, Despotism & Vengeance in a Divided Land Jeremy Seal 14 Edna Fernandes
The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing Sonia Faleiro 16 Juliet Hindell
Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Woman’s Life in NineteenthCentury Japan Amy Stanley • The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives Christopher Harding • Finding the Heart Sutra: Guided by a Magician, an Art Collector, & Buddhist Sages from Tibet to Japan Alex Kerr 18 J E Hoare
Empire and Righteous Nation: 600 Years of China–Korea Relations Odd Arne Westad 19 Hilary Bradt
The Gardens of Mars: Madagascar, an Island Story John Gimlette
power & politics 20 Oliver Balch
The Rare Metals War: The Dark Side of Clean Energy and Digital Technologies Guillaume Pitron • Wars of the Interior Joseph Zárate 22 Ewen A Cameron
This Sovereign Isle: Britain in & out of Europe Robert Tombs • How Britain Ends: English Nationalism & the Rebirth of Four Nations Gavin Esler
