Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

‘Mother says I look like a sick ostrich’

Alexander Masters transforms some anonymous diaries found discarded on a skip into a volume worthy of Laurence Sterne

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  • A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a Skip

    Alexander Masters

    Fourth Estate, pp. 234

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All the previewers have been drooling lasciviously over The Day of the Jackal reboot and, having seen the first three episodes, I quite understand why. This is coffee-table spy-drama porn perfectly calculated to satisfy all manner of lurid and exotic tastes. There’s sniper-rifle-assembly porn; foreign-property porn (the Jackal’s gorgeous mountain retreat near Cadiz with a

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