SOCIAL STUDIES LETTERS TO THE EDITOR BIOGRAPHY & POETRY

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SOCIAL STUDIES
3
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
6
BIOGRAPHY & POETRY
7
Rory Waterman
James Booth Philip Larkin – Life, art and love. John Osborne Radical
Larkin – Seven types of technical mastery
MUSIC
9
Paul Genders
Greil Marcus The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs
POEMS
9
28
Bruce Smith
Erica McAlpine
Three Poems
Corinth
CULTURAL STUDIES
10
Toby Lichtig
Andy Miller The Year of Reading Dangerously – How fifty great books
(and two not-so-great ones) saved my life. John Sutherland How To Be
Well Read – A guide to 500 great novels and a handful of literary
curiosities. Angus Kennedy Being Cultured – In defence of
discrimination
13
Iain Bamforth
Faces of his time – Attempts at a universal language in the photographs
of August Sander
Freelance
TLS April 2, 1993 – Self’s the man – Ian Hamilton on Philip Larkin
H
ome – whether an Iron Age roundhouse or
a New York penthouse – has always been COMMENTARY
one of the deepest, most heartfelt human concepts. Bee Wilson reviews two books – one by
the archaeologist Francis Pryor, one by the
writer Judith Flanders – which look closely at
ARTS
what home has meant through the ages. The
style of a dwelling can be a useful indicator of
what is most valued by a society, such as sunlight or the street, hygge (cosiness) or hygiene
– indeed, the treatment of dirt, we learn, merits
close inspection.
FICTION
Bee Wilson
Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Translating Proust, David Jones, etc
Zinovy Zinik
Then & Now
17
Ritchie Robertson
Guy Dammann
Judith Flanders
20
Natasha Lehrer
Adrian Tahourdin
Katherine Horrex
Claire Lowdon
Catherine Scott
FRENCH LITERATURE
“It’s also the case”, Wilson remarks, “that
the real home has always fallen short of the
ideal kind.” That is an insight shared by the
poet Philip Larkin, whose “Home Is So Sad”
views home as “A joyous shot at how things
ought to be, / Long fallen wide”. Two academics at the University of Hull, Larkin’s
own home for several decades, take contrasting views of the poet: a new biography of
Larkin covers the old ground (including
long-standing controversies over Larkin’s
racism and nationalism), and a new volume of
criticism puts “an erudite cat among the
pigeons”. Rory Waterman appraises both,
and wonders if either quite succeeds in setting
things straight.
Unsurprisingly, notions of home and homeland arise elsewhere in the paper too. Peter
Leary discusses the damaging disconnection
between state-drawn maps and life on the
ground: after Syrian withdrawal in 2000, for
example, half of Ghajar’s inhabitants, “who had
seen themselves as Syrian until 1981, and then
acquired Israeli citizenship, now found themselves in Lebanon”. George Bornstein commends a memoir by Yashka Mounk, one of only
15,000 Jews in post-war Germany, which
recounts a long and unsuccessful struggle to
feel German; while Ritchie Robertson, in a
review of a remarkable exhibition at the British
Museum, explores still further the question of
where and what Germany is and has been.
Finally, R. W. Johnson notes the confused affiliations of Kevin Pietersen, a South Africanborn cricketer who became one of England’s
most successful batsmen of all time, yet is
unlikely to play for his adopted country again.
RP
22
Francis Pryor Home – A time traveller’s tales from Britain’s history.
Judith Flanders The Making of Home
Germany – Memories of a nation (British Museum). Neil MacGregor
Germany – Memories of a nation
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Idomeneo (Royal Opera House)
Royal Ballet Triple Bill (Royal Opera House). Akram Khan and Israel
Galván Torobaka (On tour)
Irène Némirovsky The Fires of Autumn; Translated by Sandra Smith
Jérôme Ferrari The Sermon on the Fall of Rome; Translated by
Geoffrey Strachan
Denis Thériault The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman; Translated by
Liedewy Hawke
Paul Ewen Francis Plug – How to be a public author
Paula Marantz Cohen Suzanne Davis Gets a Life
Dan Gunn
Marguerite Duras Oeuvres complètes; Edited by Gilles Philippe et al.
Christiane Blot-Labarrère Album Marguerite Duras. Laure Adler
Marguerite Duras. Marguerite Duras L’Amour; Translated by Kazim
Ali and Libby Murphy
LITERATURE & LITERARY 25
CRITICISM
Stephen Bernard
Claire Wood
David Winter
Eliza Haywood The Invisible Spy; Edited by Carol Stewart
Simon Dentith Nineteenth-Century British Literature Then and Now
Cathy Caruth Literature in the Ashes of History
POLITICS
27
Tim Llewellyn
Ziauddin Sardar and Robin Yassin-Kassab, editors Critical Muslim
11 – Syria. Malu Halasa, Zaher Omareen and Nawara Mahfoud,
editors Syria Speaks – Art and culture from the frontline. John
McHugo Syria – From the Great War to the civil war. Reese Erlich
Inside Syria – The backstory of their civil war and what the world can
expect
HISTORY
28
Peter Leary
Asher Kaufman Contested Frontiers in the Syria-Lebanon-Israel region
– Cartography, sovereignty, and conflict
MEMOIRS
29
George Bornstein
Yascha Mounk Stranger in my Own Country – A Jewish family in
modern Germany
Andrew Borowiec Warsaw Boy – A memoir of wartime childhood;
Edited by Colin Smith
Zofia Stemplowska
IN BRIEF
30
RELIGION
32
Scott Mandelbrote
Richard Hooker Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity; Edited by Arthur
Stephen McGrade
SPORT
34
R. W. Johnson
Kevin Pietersen KP – The autobiography
Wendy Cope Life, Love and the Archers. Alan Ryan On Tocqueville.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher The Home-Maker. Donelle Ruwe British
Children’s Poetry in the Romantic Era. Roelf Bolt The Encyclopaedia of
Liars and Deceivers. Pico Iyer The Art of Stillness. Tim Townsend
Mission at Nuremberg. Justin Martin Rebel Souls
This week’s contributors, Crossword
35
NB
36
J. C.
Proust in 1923, Peter Handke and Serbia, Incomprehensibility
Cover image & p2: Reconstruction of a Mesolithic roundhouse, Howick © Clearview/Alamy; p3 © Julian Stratenschulte/dpa/Corbis; p4 Courtesy of The
Advertising Archives; p8 © Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images; p10 © Olivia Harris/Reuters; pp13,14 & 15 © Die Photographische Sammlung/SK
Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Köln/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn and DACS, London 2014; p18 © ROH/Catherine Ashmore; p20 © Gamma-Keystone via Getty
Images; p25 © The Granger Collection/TopFoto; p26 © Rick Findler; p27 Courtesy of Saqi Books; p34 © Anthony Devlin/PA
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TLS NOVEMBER 14 2014