contents
march 2021 • issue 494
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 | march 2021 2
diary 1 Jay Parini
art & architecture 6 Norma Clarke
The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution & Resilience – 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits Jennifer Higgie 7 Kathryn Murphy
Albert and the Whale Philip Hoare 9 Piers Torday
Bloomsbury Stud: The Life of Stephen ‘Tommy’ Tomlin Michael Bloch & Susan Fox 10 Anthony Paletta
Building a New World: Amerikanizm in Russian Architecture Jean-Louis Cohen • Moscow Monumental: Soviet Skyscrapers & Urban Life in Stalin’s Capital Katherine Zubovich
the state we’re in 12 Dominic Grieve
Law in a Time of Crisis Jonathan Sumption 14 Richard Heinberg
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have & the Breakthroughs We Need Bill Gates • Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future Elizabeth Kolbert 16 Helen Pearson
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, & the Future of the Human Race Walter Isaacson 17 David Anderson
We See It All: Liberty & Justice in the Age of Perpetual Surveillance Jon Fasman
notebook 18 Linda Colley How to Write a Constitution
history 20 Piers Brendon
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries 1918–38 Simon Heffer (ed) 22 Donald Rayfield
Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back: A Memoir of the Gulag Julius Margolin