Search

MONET The restless vision JACKIE WULLSCHLAGER 576pp. Allen Lane. 35 [pounds sterling]. 'I would have liked to write to each of you [separately] to thank you for your kind letters [...]

STILL PICTURES On photography and memory JANET MALCOLM 176pp, Granta. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. Janet Malcolm wrote for the New Yorker for almost sixty years on literature, photography and tine art, [...]

SOLDIER SAILOR CLAIRE KILROY 256pp. Faber. 16.99 [pounds sterling]. Claire Kilroy's fifth novel--her first in more than a decade--is a confessional love letter from a mother, Soldier, to her young [...]

NAPOLEON'S PLUNDER And the theft of Veronese's 'Feast' CYNTHIA SALTZMAN 320pp. Thames and Hudson. 25 [pounds sterling]. Cynthia Saltzman's Napoleon's Plunder skilfully interweaves three narratives: the story of the Louvre, [...]

SOJOURN Amit Chaudhuri 144pp. Faber. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. A MIT CHAUDHURI'S EIGHTH NOVEL, Sojourn, is a beautiful meditation on memory set during a temporary stay in Berlin. The unnamed narrator [...]

TRUE TO NATURE Open-air painting in Europe 1780-1870 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until August 29 TRUE TO NATURE is a perfectly timed exhibition. The European trend for landscape painting en plein [...]

GOYA A portrait of the artist JANIS A. TOMLINSON 448pp. Princeton University Press. 30 [pounds sterling] (US $35). 'IS BIOGRAPHY ESSENTIALLY the chronicle of an individual's life journey (and thus [...]

ABSENTEES On variously missing persons DANIEL HELLER-ROAZEN 320pp. Princeton University Press. 28 [pounds sterling] (US $33). The marking of absence is an early memory for all who went to school; [...]

THESE DAYS LUCY CALDWELL 288pp. Faber. 12.99 [pounds sterling]. Lucy Caldwell's fifth novel is haunted by Louis MacNeice's late poem, 'Selva Oscura' (1961). The line 'These days, though lost, will [...]

FOR THE RECORD DAVID CAMERON 752pp. William Collins. 25 [pounds sterling]. If Louis XVI had been sent to America instead of to the guillotine in 1793, and if he'd then [...]

THE WOMEN OF TROY PAT BARKER 320pp. Hamish Hamilton. 18.99 [pounds sterling]. The Women of Troy is Pat Barker's sequel to The Silence of the Girls (TLS, August 22, 2018), [...]

CHINA ROOM SUNJEEV SAHOTA 256pp. Harvill Seeker. 16.99 [pounds sterling]. The china room of Sunjeev Sahota's third novel is a narrow outbuilding with a small slatted window on a farm [...]

THE CRAFT How the Freemasons made the modern world JOHN DICKIE 496pp. Hodder and Stoughton. 25 [pounds sterling]. IN HIS ENTERTAINING HISTORY of Freemasonry, John Dickie, the author of an [...]

SYBILLE BEDFORD An appetite for life SELINA HASTINGS 432pp. Chatto and Windus. 25 [pounds sterling]. AGED SEVENTY-SEVEN, John Betjeman regretted that he had not had enough sex. Aged eighty-seven, Sybille [...]

Robert A. Caro WORKING Researching, interviewing, writing 240pp. Bodley Head. 20 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 84792 605 0 US: Knopf. $25. 978 0 525 65634 0 I never had the [...]

SNOW JOHN BANVILLE 352pp. Faber, 14.99 [pounds sterling]. Since 2006, John Banville has written crime fiction under the pen name Benjamin Black. In interviews he claims that Black writes faster [...]

The French Revolution raised the problem of how to construct a modern republic under conditions of acute political conflict. The debate over the forms of government was at its most intense before the outbreak of the Terror in 1793, when there seemed to be no alternative to instituting a republic, but there was serious disagreement over what this entailed. The problem was considered in terms of the political thought of Hobbes, Locke, Bayle, Voltaire, Helvetius, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Sieyes. The urgent political and constitutional need to reconcile accountable with effective government was central to the use made of both inherited and new ideas about the republican form of government. This parallels Madison's concern to reconcile accountable with effective government during the constitutional debates of the American Revolution.

VIRGINIA WOOLF Art, life and vision National Portrait Gallery, until October 26 ART & LIFE The paintings of Beryl Bainbridge King's College London, until October 19 'Painting and writing have [...]

MARY BEARD John Williams's novel Stoner became a must-read rediscovery of 2013. I'm afraid I resisted. But I am intending to sit down this summer with the last of his [...]

Jacqueline Rose MOTHERS An essay on love and cruelty 256pp. Faber. 12.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 0571 33143 7 US: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $26. 978 0 374 21379 4 Dale [...]

Adam Smyth, editor A HISTORY OF ENGLISH AUTOBIOGRAPHY 432pp. Cambridge University Press. 64.99 [pounds sterling] (US $99.99). 978 1 107 07841 3 Two francophone philosophers haunt A History of English [...]

The essay examines the social and political context in which historian Thomas Carlyle wrote 'The French Revolution,' along with the challenges presented when a servant accidentally burned one of the manuscript volumes, thinking it was waste paper. Carlyle's own philosophical beliefs and how they influenced his portraits of French figures is also discussed.

Haruki Murakami KILLING COMMENDATORE Translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen 704pp. Harvill Seeker. 20 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 787 30019 4 Introducing his collection of short stories, Blind Willow, [...]

Sam Miller FATHERS 256pp. Cape. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 911214 32 8 Karl Miller died in 2014. His obituaries describe an outstanding portfolio of literary, journalistic and academic achievements. [...]

Elena Ferrante FRANTUMAGLIA A writer's journey 384pp. $24. 978 1 60945 292 6 THE BEACH AT NIGHT 48pp. $13. 978 1 60945 370 1 Both published by Europa The Mean [...]

Sofka Zinovieff PUTNEY 384pp. Bloomsbury. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 4088 9575 7 PUTNEY Read by Annie Aldington Audible Sofka Zinovieff's second novel, Putney, addresses child abuse through the structure [...]