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LETTERS
3
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
6
POETRY & BIOGRAPHY
7
Michael Caines
Hannah Ellis, editor Dylan Thomas – A centenary celebration. Hilly
Janes The Three Lives of Dylan Thomas. John Goodby, editor The
Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas – New centenary edition. John
Goodby The Poetry of Dylan Thomas – Under the spelling wall
BIOGRAPHY
9
Dinah Birch
A. N. Wilson Victoria – A Life
Nicola Shulman
Sheila Heti, et al Women in Clothes. Lena Dunham Not That Kind of
Girl – A young woman tells you what she’s learned
Vivienne Westwood and Ian Kelly Vivienne Westwood
FASHION & MEMOIRS
10
James Campbell
J. Michael Lennon, editor Selected Letters of Norman Mailer
Archbishop Pole, Rembrandt’s circles, Mummers, etc
Mika Ross-Southall
FOOD
12
Tom Jaine
Luke Barr Provence, 1970 – M. F. K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard,
and the reinvention of American taste. Jean-Pierre Moullé and Denise
Lurton Moullé French Roots – Two cooks, two countries and the
beautiful food along the way. Joël Robuchon and Loïc Bienassis
French Regional Food. Katrina Meynink Bistronomy – French food
unbound
Sandra M. Gilbert The Culinary Imagination – From myth to
modernity
Dan Jurafsky The Language of Food. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson
Word of Mouth
A
t this time of the year it is common to hear
the words “the Victorians invented
Christmas”, often uttered by those who for
some reason or other choose not to celebrate it
too much. Christmas trees and cards can also
be deemed delightfully German, an import
abetted by the Queen’s beloved Consort,
Prince Albert, and consequently even less
guiltily ignored. This week Dinah Birch considers A. N. Wilson’s biography of Victoria,
beginning with her position as probably the
last British sovereign to sit in the royal tradition of those who “occupy two bodies – one
earthly and mortal, the other mystical and
quasi-divine”. A Life of Britain’s last empress
must balance the competing demands of this
duality and Wilson does so, Birch decides,
“with buoyant assurance”. It is Albert who in
Wilson’s view, is “the only member of the
Royal family in recent history, or perhaps ever,
who deserves the name of genius”.
Few have ever claimed that German or British genius invented cooking, or indeed that
Britons played any very significant part at all
in what we quite rightly call cuisine. In one of
four reviews on cookery matters this week
Tom Jaine considers a batch of new books on
the varieties of French contribution to the culinary arts, beginning in the year 1602, when the
author of the “finest English recipe book of the
seventeenth century” was packed off to Paris
Carolin C. Young
Kerstin Hoge
COMMENTARY
16
Woman in white – Why Margery Kempe divides modern readers as
much as she did her medieval audience
Freelance
TLS August 26, 1939 – Thomas’s wild tongue
Anthony Bale
Alan Taylor
Then & Now
ARTS
19
Cubism – The Leonard A. Lauder Collection (Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York). Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow, editors Cubism
– The Leonard A. Lauder Collection
Georges Perec Portrait of a Man; Translated by David Bellos. Oulipo,
la littérature en jeu(x) (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris)
Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (National Theatre)
Sherlock Holmes – The man who never lived and will never die
(Museum of London)
Patrick McCaughey
Lauren Elkin
David Horspool
Jonathan Barnes
FICTION
22
Edmund Gordon
Margaret Atwood Stone Mattress. Hilary Mantel The Assassination of
Margaret Thatcher
Richard Ford Let Me Be Frank With You
John Darnielle Wolf in White Van
Peter Stamm All Days Are Night
S. J. Naudé The Alphabet of Birds
D. A. Mishani A Possibility of Violence
Lucian Robinson
Houman Barekat
Alexander Starritt
Alison Kelly
Justin Warshaw
CHRISTMAS QUIZ
25
CULTURAL STUDIES
26
Jacqueline Banerjee
Jeffrey Richards The Golden Age of Pantomime. Linda Simon The
Greatest Shows on Earth – A history of the circus
John Lucas and Allan Chatburn A Brief History of Whistling. Steven
Connor Beyond Words – Sobs, hums, stutters and other vocalizations
John Payne
to see what he could learn. For all the troubles
of twentieth-century France, the reputation of
“the patrimoine culinaire” remains “impressive” while “Britain remains whimpering on
the sidelines”. Jaine cites a poem praising a
British writer (pictured) who worked to even
the score: “this is the cuisine / we might be eating still had we not read / Elizabeth David and
begun to think / about the better ways we might
be fed”.
James Campbell notes how Norman
Mailer’s letters, for all their critical and
rhetorical power, reveal a man for whom
neither Britain nor France were of great
import. Michael Caines gives a vivid verdict
on centenary tributes to Dylan Thomas. Tony
Lurcock elegantly inserts dentistry into our
Christmas quiz.
PS
SPORT
29
Toby Lichtig
David Goldblatt The Game of Our Lives
BIOGRAPHY
30
Jacques Rupnik
Kathryn Murphy
Victor Davis Hanson
Douglas Field
Michael Zantovsky Havel – A Life
Ivan Klíma My Crazy Century – A memoir
Andrew Roberts Napoleon the Great
Stephen Tuck The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union
Saladin Ambar Malcolm X at the Oxford Union
IN BRIEF
34
LITERARY CRITICISM
36
Andrew Gallix
Aaron Hillyer The Disappearance of Literature
POETRY
37
Victor Sonkin
Peter France and Robyn Marsack, editors After Lermontov
FOOD
38
Darra Goldstein
Monday Morning Cooking Club The Feast Goes On. Janna Gur
Jewish Soul Food – From Minsk to Marrakesh
Alan Bennett et al Meeting the Devil, etc
This week’s contributors
39
NB
40
Conrad and Ford, Christmas 1914, Seamus Heaney
J. C.
Cover image: Caricature of Norman Mailer by Aislin (alias Terry Mosher), ink and felt pen on paper, 1973 © McCord Museum, Montréal, Canada; p2 © Topfoto ; p3 ©
p2 © Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images; p4 © Robert Belott/Alamy; p7 © Estate of Alfred Janes/Courtesy National Museum of Wales; p9 © Mary Evans Picture Library;
p10 Michael Buckner/Getty Images; p11 © Elisa Leonelli/Rex Features; p12 © Bridgeman Art Library; p16 © Holmes Garden Photos/Alamy; p18 © Hulton Archive/
Getty Images; p19 ©Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection/ 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris; p21 © Etienne Lécroart/BnF; p22 © Aris
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Getty Images; p31© Tomas Krist/isifa/Getty Images; p32 © Bridgeman Art Library; p33 © Hulton Archive/Getty Images; p36 © Tate Images; p37 © akg-images
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TLS DECEMBER 19 & 26
2014