London Review of Books

The Greatest Warlord

David Blackbourn: Hitler, 22 March 2001

Hitler, 1936-45: Nemesis
by Ian Kershaw.
Allen Lane, 1115 pp., £25, October 2000, 0 7139 9229 8Show More

“... fits of anger. The Swedish industrialist Birger Dahlerus witnessed one of these when a letter from Lord Halifax was delivered to the Chancellery during the Polish crisis in August 1939. Hitler launched into a lengthy diatribe. He marched up and down throwing out facts and figures about German military might, then began to shout as if addressing a ...”

Iron Tearing Soil

James Francken: Golf, 4 October 2001

A Gentleman's Game
by Tom Coyne.
Atlantic, 264 pp., £15, July 2001, 1 903809 05 3Show More

Riverbank Tweed and Roadmap Jenkins: Tales from the Caddie Yard
by Bo Links.
Simon and Schuster, 302 pp., £15, May 2001, 0 684 87362 1Show More

Spikes
by Michael Griffith.
Arcade, 258 pp., £17, February 2001, 1 55970 536 1Show More

“... from golf – he has netted $19,000 in three years – but what is the alternative? ‘Living at home full-time, football on the tube, a pull-start lawnmower, a kid or two underfoot.’ He had never expected to find himself in a slump; it was true that he hadn’t gone all-out with his studies, but it hardly mattered when golf could help him cut corners on ...”

Heiling Hitler

Geoffrey Best: Churchill, Hitler and the ‘Times’, 21 June 2001

The ‘Times’ and Appeasement: The Journals of A.L. Kennedy 1932-39
Cambridge, 312 pp., £40, March 2001, 0 521 79354 8Show More

Churchill and Appeasement
by R.A.C. Parker.
Papermac, 290 pp., £12.99, May 2001, 0 333 67584 3Show More

“... to it in 1919 after ‘a good war’. Comfortable in the company of politicians and officials at home and abroad, and fluent in at least French and German, he became one of that cosmopolitan set of well-dressed journalists, socialites, lobbyists and secret agents forever circulating in the antechambers and corridors of power and in the clubs, country houses ...”

Diary

Alison Light: In Portsmouth, 7 February 2008

“... of South-East Hampshire. It perches on the slopes of Portsdown Hill, close to where in the 1860s Lord Palmerston had yet more forts built against the French (known locally as ‘Palmerston’s Follies’). My father makes the eight-mile round trip for blood tests and transfusions, including a monthly intravenous dose of pamidronate, a drug that can lessen ...”

In Pursuit of an Heiress

Nicholas Penny: Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, 16 June 2016

Letters of a Dead Man
by Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, edited and translated by Linda Parshall.
Dumbarton Oaks, 753 pp., £55.95, May 2016, 978 0 88402 411 8Show More

“... and white, with contrasting black-patinated bronzes. By chance an inventory of the contents of Lord Hertford’s villa in Regent’s Park survives which closely corresponds, although without the alarming carnal epithet. Other sources confirm his account of the extraordinary Chinese dairy at Woburn, approached through massed azaleas and rhododendrons, and ...”

The Journalistic Exemption

Jo Glanville: GDPR and Journalism, 5 July 2018

“... legal battles; some are reassessing the limits of public interest and the parameters of reporting. Lord Leveson proposed significantly limiting the scope of the exemption for journalism and giving the information commissioner stronger enforcement powers. Conducted in the long wake of his inquiry, the passage through Parliament of the new Data Protection Act ...”

Closed Windows

T.H. Barrett, 11 January 1990

The Question of Hu
by Jonathan Spence.
Faber, 187 pp., £12.99, September 1989, 0 571 14118 8Show More

“... in such a bizarre fashion that in 1723 he was committed to an asylum. In 1726 he was shipped back home alone; meanwhile Foucquet had distanced himself both from his Chinese assistant and from his own missionary colleagues, and had become a bishop in Rome. This is a sad story, simply told by Jonathan Spence – perhaps too simply for some historians. It ...”

Send them to Eton!

Linda Colley, 19 August 1993

The End of the House of Windsor: Birth of a British Republic
by Stephen Haseler.
Tauris, 208 pp., £14.95, June 1993, 1 85043 735 1Show More

The Rise and Fall of the House of Windsor
by A.N. Wilson.
Sinclair-Stevenson, 211 pp., £16.99, May 1993, 1 85619 354 3Show More

Royal Throne: The Future of the Monarchy
by Elizabeth Longford.
Hodder, 189 pp., £16.99, April 1993, 0 340 58587 0Show More

Diana v. Charles
by James Whitaker.
Signet, 237 pp., £14.99, May 1993, 0 670 85245 7Show More

The Tarnished Crown
by Anthony Holden.
Bantam, 400 pp., £16.99, May 1993, 0 593 02472 9Show More

Inheritance: A Psychological History of the Royal Family
by Dennis Friedman.
Sidgwick, 212 pp., £14.99, April 1993, 0 283 06124 3Show More

Raine and Johnnie: The Spencers and the Scandal of Althorp
by Angela Levin.
Weidenfeld, 297 pp., £17.99, July 1993, 0 297 81325 0Show More

“... Establishment is that she is reputedly flirting with Roman Catholicism. This inspires those like Lord Rees-Mogg to hope that the hapless Diana may finally shatter the Act of Settlement of 1701 which banned Catholic monarchs from inheriting this kingdom, and heirs to the throne from marrying Catholics. After all, even if she divorces her husband, she will ...”

Gisgo and his Enemies

John Bayley, 13 February 1992

The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo
by Russell Weigley.
Indiana, 608 pp., £22.50, June 1991, 0 253 36380 2Show More

“... reasonable accuracy impossible much beyond fifty yards, but attacks were only infrequently driven home. With the cavalry generally refraining from headlong charges as well, battle degenerated into an indecisive contest.’ Wallenstein’s mercenaries would much rather pillage than take risks in battle, and the commanders, too, preferred not to lose rather ...”

War within wars

Paul Addison, 5 November 1992

War, Strategy and International Politics: Essays in Honour of Sir Michael Howard
edited by Lawrence Freedman, Paul Hayes and Robert O’Neill.
Oxford, 322 pp., £35, July 1992, 0 19 822292 0Show More

“... as a One-Nation Tory: but he was the cousin and friend of Richard Crossman and perfectly at home in the company of Labour politicians. One of his hallmarks is an interest in the ideas of the Left and a readiness to address them with a measure of respect. He is, indeed, strongly reminiscent of the type of army officer in the Second World War who believed ...”

Writing a book about it

Christopher Reid, 17 October 1985

Collected Poems
by Norman MacCaig.
Chatto, 390 pp., £9.95, August 1985, 0 7011 3953 6Show More

“... fly’; and its very last lines – The black cow is two native carriers Bringing its belly home, slung from a pole – are an ideal blend of the comical and the exotic. The playful, humorous, genially delighted side of MacCaig’s poetic personality is one that many of his readers may wish he had cultivated more assiduously. It is this that lends ...”

Boundary Books

Margaret Meek, 21 February 1980

Kate Crackernuts
by Katharine Briggs.
Kestrel, 224 pp., £2.95, September 1980, 0 7226 5557 6Show More

Socialisation through Children’s Literature: The Soviet Example
by Felicity Ann O’Dell.
Cambridge, 278 pp., £14, January 1979, 9780521219686Show More

Divide and Rule
by Jan Mark.
Kestrel, 248 pp., £3.50, October 1980, 0 7226 5620 3Show More

“... A shared territory is the fairy-tale and its modern derivatives, of which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are the best-known examples. Tolkien is also a subtle apologist for the creators of the secondary world of enchantment ‘into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its ...”

Julia Caesar

Marilyn Butler, 17 March 1983

The Prince and the Wild Geese
by Brigid Brophy.
Hamish Hamilton, 62 pp., £5.95, February 1983, 0 241 10894 2Show More

“... current head of the family, their half-brother, another John Taaffe, to visit a distant kinsman, Lord William Fitzgerald. Actually they have been sent, all too transparently, to get themselves off the shelf. Gagarin is younger, 22, and a Roman resident. He has lived there since he was six, and now occupies his leisure studying art in the studio of the ...”

His Secret Opening

Joe Dunthorne: Revism, 2 April 2020

Childhood
by Gerard Reve.
Pushkin, 160 pp., £9.99, October 2019, 978 1 78227 459 9Show More

“... that book of yours – did you know that I wept while reading some of its passages?’ ‘My Lord and my God! Praised be Your Name to all Eternity! I love You so immensely,’ I would try to say, but would burst out crying halfway, and start to kiss Him and pull Him inside, and after a colossal climb up the stairs to the little bedroom, I would possess ...”

On Thatcher

“... if ‘youths’ put the boot in after office hours. No amount of moralistic afterthoughts by the home secretary is going to alter that. Meanwhile he should look round the table.Alan Bennett, 31 March 1988Personally , she is neither nice nor interesting. She has immense energy, remarkable tenacity and stamina, and a good brain. But she has a shallow ...”

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