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Booksrss

Journal of a disappointed man

14 January 2012
Freud’s Couch, Scott’s Buttocks, Bront Simon Goldhill

University of Chicago Press, pp.131, £14.50

Simon Goldhill introduces his new book by recalling a lunch with his editor, who suggested he make a pilgrimage and write about it. Pilgrimages, he reflected, tend to be made… Read more

Pearls before swine

4 June 2011
The Unreliable Life of Harry the Valet: The Great Victorian Jewel Thief Duncan Hamilton

Century, pp.318, 14.99

The story of Harry the Valet is the stuff of fiction. He was a dazzlingly adept, smooth, glamorous jewel thief, who never stooped to petty crime but carried off the… Read more

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Theatre of the macabre

8 January 2011
The Invention of Murder Judith Flanders

Harper Press, pp.556, 20

Sam Leith marvels at Victorian Britain’s appetite for crime, where a public hanging was considered a family day out and murder became a lurid industry in itself On my satellite… Read more

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On the brink

2 June 2010
Winter on the Nile: Florence Nightingale, Gustave Flaubert and the Temptations of Egypt Anthony Sattin

Hutchinson, pp.316, 20

Stephen Potter’s Lifemanship contains a celebrated tip for writers who want to ensure good reviews. Stephen Potter’s Lifemanship contains a celebrated tip for writers who want to ensure good reviews.… Read more

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Mystery of the empty tomb

2 June 2010
Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint John Cornwell

Continuum, pp.273, 18.99

John Henry Newman was an electrifying personality who has attracted numerous biographers and commentators. John Cornwell, in his excellent guided tour around this well-ploughed field, recalls the young woman in… Read more

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Life beyond the canvas

24 February 2010
Into the Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown Angela Thirlwell

Chatto, pp.328, 25

Angela Thirlwell’s previous book was a double biography of William Rossetti (brother to the more famous Dante Gabriel) and his wife Lucy (daughter of the more famous Ford Madox Brown).… Read more

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The grandest of old men

27 January 2010
Gladstone: A Bicentenary Portrait William Gladstone

Michael Russell, pp.192, 18.50

Mr Gladstone’s career in politics was titanic. Mr Gladstone’s career in politics was titanic. He sat for over 60 years in the Commons, was in the cabinet before he was… Read more

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Double vision

27 January 2010
Macaulay: The Tragedy of Power Robert E. Sullivan

Belknap Press, pp.624, 29.95

Thomas Babington Macaulay’s early essays in the Edinburgh Review were an immediate success, and soon made him a respected figure in Whig society. Thomas Babington Macaulay’s early essays in the… Read more

Cheering satanism

4 November 2009
The Devil is a Gentleman Phil Baker

Dedalus, pp.699, 25

‘For my generation of Essex teenagers, Dennis Wheatley’s novels represented the essential primer in diabolism,’ Ronald Hutton, the historian and expert on paganism, recalls. ‘For my generation of Essex teenagers,… Read more

Concealing and revealing

30 September 2009
Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing Michael Slater

Yale, pp.670, 25

In 1837 The Quarterly Review’s anonymous critic — actually, one Abraham Hayward — turned his attention to Charles Dickens, then in the first flaring of his popularity as the author… Read more

Surprising literary ventures

23 September 2009
Ermyntrude and Esmeralda Lytton Strachey

Ermyntrude and Esmeralda was written in 1913 but not published until 1969, long after Lytton Strachey’s death. The delay was not surprising: the book consists of an exchange of letters… Read more