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U
nderestimating the complexities of Islam
has a long history. British policy-makers
used to think of themselves as more expert than
their foreign counterparts, but the unfortunate
oversimplifications in the mind of Tony Blair
seem likely to loom larger in the twenty-first
century record than any Whitehall sagacity. A
much-admired new book by the Cambridge
historian David Motadel examines the
Germans’ difficulty in fitting Islam into an
alien framework during the Second World
War. Hitler needed mass Muslim support in
North Africa in 1941, and hoped that murdering Jews and translating “Stuka dive bomber”
as “eagle of the prophet” might outweigh his
view of Arab racial inferiority in Mein Kampf.
Gerald Butt praises Motadel’s account of the
reasons for Nazi failure in the region, noting
some of the unchanged mistakes made by
Western powers six decades on.
During the battles for North Africa the
British had frequent cause to be grateful that
General Franco’s Spain, with its land access to
the Straits of Gibraltar, was not allied to the Axis
cause. Why precisely this was the case and who
deserved our thanks are still subjects of debate,
although, as Felipe Fernández-Armesto notes
this week, “Paul Preston demonstrated long ago
that the decision was Hitler’s, who refused to
pay the price Franco sought”. FernándezArmesto is reviewing an attempt at “a new vindication” of Franco, judging him beside rivals
of the time who might have been “no better” or
“probably just as bad”. Stanley Payne and Jesús
Palacios have written “a fearless book” that our
critic hopes “may not be friendless”.
BIOGRAPHY
3
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
6
HISTORY
8
Lauro Martines
Ian Mortimer Centuries of Change – Which century saw the most
change and why it matters to us
CLASSICS
9
James Romm
Christopher Pelling and Maria Wyke Twelve Voices from Greece and
Rome – Ancient ideas for modern times
Adrienne Mayor The Amazons – Lives and legends of warrior women
across the ancient world
Felipe Fernández-Armesto Stanley Payne and Jesús Palacios Franco – A personal and political
biography
Bats and Texans, ‘Little Women’, Berryman’s ‘Sonnets’, etc
Simon Goldhill
LITERARY CRITICISM
11
Kasia Boddy
Roberta Rubenstein Literary Half-Lives – Doris Lessing, Clancy Sigal,
and roman à clef
HISTORY
12
Gerald Butt
Sumita Mukherjee
Stefan Ihrig Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination. David Motadel Islam and
Nazi Germany’s War
Anita Anand Sophia – Princess, suffragette, revolutionary
COMMENTARY
14
Robert DeMaria, Jr
David Arscott
Then & Now
Careful and careless – Epic tales in the editing of Dr Johnson
Freelance
TLS December 27, 1974 – Life vandalism
ARTS
17
Matthew Bown
Anna Picard
Rubens and His Legacy – Van Dyck to Cézanne (Royal Academy of
Arts)
Henry Purcell The Indian Queen (English National Opera, Coliseum)
FICTION
19
Russell Williams
John Taylor
Sam Byers
Michel Houellebecq Soumission
Éric Reinhardt L’Amour et les forêts
Miranda July The First Bad Man
FICTION IN BRIEF
21
Andrew Irwin
Catherine Scott
David Collard
Conor Farrington
Michael Nath British Story – A romance
James MacManus Sleep in Peace Tonight
Sara Baume spill simmer falter wither
John Boyne A History of Loneliness
LITERARY CRITICISM
22
Iain Bamforth
Alicia Rix
Lois Potter
Adam Kirsch Rocket and Lightship – Essays on literature and ideas
Jean Perrot Henry James’s Enigmas – Turning the screw of eternity?
Thomas L. Berger and Sonia Massai, editors Paratexts in English
Printed Drama to 1642
BIOGRAPHY
24
Jules Smith
Ian S. MacNiven “Literchoor is My Beat” – A Life of James Laughlin,
publisher of New Directions. Peter Glassgold, editor The Collected
Poems of James Laughlin
POEMS
24 A. E. Stallings
27 C. J. Driver
Half of an Epic Simile not found in Hesiod
Fragment
POLITICS
25
Martin Meredith
Andrew Sardanis Zambia – The first 50 years: Reflections of an
eyewitness. Christopher S. Adam, Paul Collier and Michael
Gondwe, editors Zambia – Building prosperity from resource wealth
RELIGION
26
Tina Beattie
Geoffrey Rowell
Lissa McCullough The Religious Philosophy of Simone Weil
Ian Ker Newman on Vatican II
NATURAL SCIENCE
27
Gabriel Hemery
Oliver Rackham The Ash Tree
TRAVEL
28
Jonathan Dore
Hampton Sides In the Kingdom of Ice – The grand and terrible polar
voyage of the USS Jeannette. Bea Uusma The Expedition – A love
story – Solving the mystery of a polar tragedy. Michael Smith
Shackleton – By endurance we conquer. George Lowe and
Huw Lewis-Jones The Crossing of Antarctica – Original photographs
from the epic journey that fulfilled Shackleton’s dream
Márton Szepsi Csombor Europica Varietas; Translated by Bernard
Adams
George Gömöri
“Time and time again”, writes Lauro
Martines, “famine propelled soldiers and civilians into acts of unspeakable cruelty.” He is
describing conditions in the fourteenth,
sixteenth, seventeenth and twentieth centuries
in a review of Ian Mortimer’s Centuries of
Change. The striking illustration on the same
page is of the peculiarly timeless character of
London’s Liverpool Street station (detail
above), captured in a rediscovered wood
engraving by the little-known artist Norman
Janes, recently published in a handsome
account of his life and work by Elizabeth Grice.
PS
IN BRIEF
30
PHILOSOPHY
32
Maria Rosa Antognazza
Richard T. W. Arthur Leibniz. Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra
Leibniz’s Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles
SPORT
34
Michael Beloff
John Carlin Chase Your Shadow – The trials of Oscar Pistorius
Josh Cohen The Private Life – Why we remain in the dark, etc
This week’s contributors, Crossword
35
NB
36
J. C.
How to use the comma, Modiano’s maman, Scots de la Mare
Cover image: Detail from an allegorical painting of General Franco as Chief of the armed forces of land, sea and air. Artist unknown © Album/Oronoz/akg-images;
p3 © Mario Tama/Getty Images; p4 © Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images; p8 Courtesy Evergreen Press; p10 © DeAgostini/SuperStock; p12 © Corbis; p14
Courtesy of the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection at the Houghton Library, Harvard University; p17 © Museo Nacional Del Prado; p18 © Alastair Muir;
p19 © Xavier Francolon/SIPA/Rex Features; p25 © Carol Lee/Alamy; p27 © FLO/Science and Society/SuperStock; p28 © The George Lowe Collection; p34 ©
Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images
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TLS MARCH 6 2015