London Review of Books

Still Reeling from My Loss

Andrew O’Hagan: Lulu & Co, 2 January 2003

I Don't Want to Fight
by Lulu.
Time Warner, 326 pp., £17.99, October 2002, 0 316 86169 3Show More

Billy
by Pamela Stephenson.
HarperCollins, 400 pp., £6.99, July 2002, 0 00 711092 8Show More

Just for the Record
by Geri Halliwell.
Ebury, 221 pp., £17.99, September 2002, 0 09 188655 4Show More

Learning to Fly
by Victoria Beckham.
Penguin, 528 pp., £6.99, July 2002, 0 14 100394 4Show More

Right from the Start
by Gareth Gates.
Virgin, 80 pp., £9.99, September 2002, 1 85227 914 1Show More

Honest
by Ulrika Jonsson.
Sidgwick, 417 pp., £16.99, October 2002, 0 283 07367 5Show More

“... friends. Lulu has more than your average head for vertiginous name-dropping: it’s Elton this and John Lennon that, insecurity all the way, but this doesn’t stop the portrait from becoming something of an anthem to Little Me-ism. Lulu is a Sixties being: one of the first of that generation of pop stars to be found cool on account of their class, their ...”

Bastard Gaelic Man

Colin Kidd, 14 November 1996

The Correspondence of Adam Ferguson
edited by Vincenzo Merolle.
Pickering & Chatto, 257 pp., £135, October 1995, 1 85196 140 2Show More

“... the Scottish science of man is embedded deep in institutions. Hume, Smith, Adam Ferguson and John Millar have become tutelar deities of campus and think-tank, the respected grandfathers of the social sciences and patron saints of the policy wonk. Yet, for all this familiarity, the otherness of the Scottish Enlightenment tends to elude us. Adam Ferguson ...”

Travels on the left

Paul Foot, 2 December 1993

John Strachey: An Intellectual Biography
by Noel Thompson.
Macmillan, 288 pp., £27.50, May 1993, 0 333 51154 9Show More

John Strachey
by Michael Newman.
Manchester, 208 pp., £12.99, September 1989, 9780719021749Show More

“... for Aston, Birmingham issued the following leaflet: £5 Reward! DESPERATE TORIES WILD LIE. Mr John Strachey writes: ‘It has come to my notice that Tory canvassers are making the outrageous statement that I am a foreigner. This is a most serious allegation which the Aston Tory Party, utterly beaten in political argument, has fallen back upon as a last ...”

Vindicated!

David Edgar: The Angry Brigade, 16 December 2004

The Angry Brigade: The Cause and the Case
by Gordon Carr.
ChristieBooks, 168 pp., £34, July 2003, 1 873976 21 6Show More

Granny Made Me an Anarchist
by Stuart Christie.
Scribner, 423 pp., £10.99, September 2004, 0 7432 5918 1Show More

“... dominated and defined the political culture of the mid-1970s. It’s hard to conceive of Tony Blair launching his career by defending the Angry Brigade. Despite having planted bombs at the homes of leading Conservative ministers (and the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police), the Angries have received little mainstream historical attention. An instant ...”

Going on the air

Philip French, 2 May 1985

Orwell: The War Broadcasts
edited by W.J. West.
Duckworth/BBC, 304 pp., £12.95, March 1985, 0 7156 1916 0Show More

“... a year as a talks producer in the Indian Section of the Far Eastern Service. He was hired as Eric Blair, but those who brought him in were clearly signing up George Orwell, author of Burmese Days, a book long banned in India, and likely to appeal to those Indian intellectuals whose hearts and minds the Far Eastern Service was set on capturing. A celebrated ...”

How should we think about the Caliphate?

Owen Bennett-Jones: In the Caliphate, 17 July 2014

“... sentenced to death. All this has happened with the support of the West: the US secretary of state, John Kerry, recently handed over half a billion dollars to the Sisi regime. And the situation in Syria has led some to wonder whether, compared to the jihadis, Assad might after all be the best option. The West would be more than tempted to back any suitable ...”

Plonking

Ferdinand Mount: Edward Heath, 22 July 2010

Edward Heath
by Philip Ziegler.
Harper, 654 pp., £25, June 2010, 978 0 00 724740 0Show More

“... fair book, but I cannot believe that its subject would have liked it any better than he cared for John Campbell’s 1993 biography, Heath’s own copy of which is scrawled with angry marginalia – ‘Nonsense!’, ‘No!’ and ‘Wrong!’ Campbell’s book was less alluring in style, more detailed in its accounts of interminable ...”

Magical Orange Grove

Anne Diebel: Lowell falls in love again, 11 August 2016

Robert Lowell in Love
by Jeffrey Meyers.
Massachusetts, 288 pp., £36.50, December 2015, 978 1 62534 186 0Show More

“... In the summer of 1935, when he was 18, Robert Lowell and two friends from St Mark’s School – Blair Clark and Frank Parker – rented a house in Nantucket. Under Lowell’s direction, they studied the Bible (with special attention to the Book of Job) and ate cereal with raw honey and ‘badly’ cooked eels ...”

Wedgism

Neal Ascherson: Cold War Stories, 23 July 2009

Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain and International Communism 1945-50
by Marc Selverstone.
Harvard, 304 pp., £36.95, February 2009, 978 0 674 03179 1Show More

“... was seamed with cracks into which ‘wedges’ could be driven. The Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis wrote 20 years ago that American statesmen in the postwar period never ‘believed in the existence of an international Communist monolith’. After reading Selverstone’s work, it would be hard to accept that judgment. But at almost all times ...”

Conspire Slowly, Act Quickly

David Runciman: Thatcher Undone, 2 January 2020

Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography Vol. III: Herself Alone
by Charles Moore.
Allen Lane, 1072 pp., £35, October 2019, 978 0 241 32474 5Show More

“... merely how the game sometimes has to be played.The means they ultimately chose was to rally around John Major as the person best placed to stop Heseltine. Thatcher reluctantly came to accept this and therefore to accept the ostensible reasons they gave for her stepping aside. Very soon she would regret having fallen for it. Yet it had been clear for some time ...”

Debellicised

Andrew Bacevich: The Protean face of modern warfare, 3 March 2005

The Remnants of War
by John Mueller.
Cornell, 258 pp., £16.50, September 2004, 0 8014 4239 7Show More

The Future of War: The Re-Enchantment of War in the 21st Century
by Christopher Coker.
Blackwell, 162 pp., £50, October 2004, 1 4051 2042 8Show More

The New Wars
by Herfried Münkler.
Polity, 180 pp., £14.99, October 2004, 0 7456 3337 4Show More

“... all of recorded history. Yet a remarkable number of writers persist in trying. To be fair, John Mueller, a leading figure in the war-is-dead school, does not so much ignore the past as twist it to suit his purposes. But in the twisting, The Remnants of War renders history all but unrecognisable. The result is a book that conveys a relentlessly sunny ...”

Reflections on the Independence Referendum

“... as a US vassal. Hence the appeals from Obama and Hillary Clinton to vote ‘No’, a sentiment Blair fully shares but dare not admit to, fearing that his intervention might tip the balance in the opposite direction. There is no issue of principle here, just imperial interests. The US accelerated the break-up of the old Soviet state, first the Baltic ...”

Be Dull, Mr President

Kim Phillips-Fein: Remembering Reagan, 19 October 2006

President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination
by Richard Reeves.
Simon and Schuster, 571 pp., £20, March 2006, 0 7432 3022 1Show More

“... of American hostages in Tehran. In the early hours of the morning on Inauguration Day, he called Blair House, where Reagan was sleeping, with exciting news about progress. Mike Deaver, the president-elect’s aide, told Carter it was too soon to wake him. At 8 o’clock, when Deaver finally tried to rouse the new president, telling him it would soon be time ...”

When Capitalism Calls

Andy Beckett: The Protest Ethic by John Lloyd, 4 April 2002

The Protest Ethic: How the Anti-Globalisation Movement Challenges Social Democracy
by John Lloyd.
Demos, 94 pp., £9.95, November 2001, 1 84180 009 0Show More

“... hour or so he kept up a fairly convincing defence of the Government. He cited the increases under Blair of certain social security benefits, the reductions in taxes for some of the poorest Britons, the reforming energy of the Administration in general. But then his mood darkened. The problem with New Labour’s busy modern brand of social democracy, he ...”

The Ugly Revolution

Michael Rogin: Martin Luther King Jr, 10 May 2001

I May Not Get there with You: The True Martin Luther King Jr
by Michael Eric Dyson.
Free Press, 404 pp., £15.99, May 2000, 0 684 86776 1Show More

The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr. Vol. IV: Symbol of the Movement January 1957-December 1958
edited by Clayborne Carson et al.
California, 637 pp., £31.50, May 2000, 0 520 22231 8Show More

“... in the freedom struggle. The four political assassinations that define the 1960s – those of John and Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and King – stand in for the very large numbers (almost all black and lost to national public memory) martyred to racial justice. It is now a commonplace that, instead of protecting Southern civil rights workers, the FBI (with ...”

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