Things don’t usually fall apart completely in Britain and the centre holds. In the mid-seventeenth century, however, civil war raged across the islands. Military rule in England was followed by the conquest of Ireland and Scotland, paving the way for the Union. Michael Braddick, reviewing Ian Gentles’s The New Model Army, thinks there are lessons here for our “dysfunctional” democracy. This week the TLS features several meditations on times of civil war.
By Martin Ivens
Times Literary Supplement, May 27, 2022 – @TheTLS, featuring @NshShulman on the Queen; @nclarke14 on Melvyn Bragg; @richardlea on nuclear power; Claire Lowdon on Elif Batuman; @RohanMaitzen on Rosalind Brackenbury; @rinireg on abortion – and more.
London Review of Books, May 26, 2022 –
LettersHugh Pennington, Anna Swan, Thomas Ciantra, Nicholas Blanton, David Howell, Oren Margolis, Peter Thonemann, Michael Gray, Nick Rampley, Bernard Richards, Tom WellsClare JacksonElizabeth Stuart: Queen of Hearts by Nadine AkkermanJames ButlerShort Cuts: Limping to Success
Times Literary Supplement, May 20, 2022 – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring @wmarybeard on Roman souvenirs; @EdwardDocx on Boris Johnson and contempt; @pwilcken on Operation Car Wash; @AdamSJFoulds on music and conflict; @_Poots_ on Leslie Thomas QC – and more
Booklist Magazine, May 15, 2022 – From a barrier-leaping African American woman in the Gilded Age to a military coup in Guatemala and the woman bookseller who first published James Joyce’s Ulysses a century ago, the most radiant historical novels of the past 12 months illuminate many lives and times.
John Goodall’s The Castle: A history is the much slimmer companion to his magisterial The English Castle, (2011). Partly an attempt to bring the fruits of his research to a wider audience, Goodall’s new book uses extracts and quotations as the foundation of a historical account: each short chapter features an excerpt from a primary source that seeks to illustrate a particular moment. Rather than offering an architectural or conventional narrative history, Goodall explores the concept of the castle as it has been imagined, remade and contested over time. Important castles such as the Tower of London, Kenilworth and Windsor feature throughout.
Times Literary Supplement May 13, 2022 – Raphael: worn out by love, or work? | James Hall [reviews] Antonio Forcellino’s newly translated biography of the “most rounded, efficient and consistently accomplished of Renaissance artists”
Geoffrey O’Brien – Schemes Gone Awry
Richard Wilbur’s translations of Molière, now in the Library of America, have a fluency that goes beyond meter and rhyme to encompass textures of speech and movements of thought.
Molière: The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations
Fintan O’Toole – Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes
The US’s history of moral evasiveness around wartime atrocities undermines the very institution that might eventually bring Putin and his subordinates to justice: the International Criminal Court.
Times Literary Supplement, May 6, 2022 – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring James Fenton on Volume IV of John Richardson’s Picasso biography; @joemoransblog on the “Premonitions Bureau”; @JuliusKrein on the American Right; @MElizabethLowry on William Kentridge; @AnaAliciaGarza on James Agee – and more
May 2, 2022 – Our food system is a rich, complex blend of biology and culture. From the biodiversity in forests, oceans, and farms to the living weave of long-standing traditions and emerging trends, food touches every aspect of life on Earth. This diversity hasn’t always carried through to agricultural and culinary literatures, but fortunately this is changing. Fresh perspectives are emerging in the literary discussions of food, addressing a range of topics and cuisines. In 2022, Science will share this tapestry in a limited podcast series on science and food. Hosted by journalist Angela Saini, the series will highlight books from around the world that intersect with this theme. A different book and its author will appear monthly on the Science podcast, beginning on 26 May 2022.
Together, the books discussed in these segments expose an entanglement of biology, culinary science, and culture. In Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them, Dan Saladino addresses biodiversity loss and the future of food. Saladino covers vast swaths of time and space, taking us from wild honey gatherers in Africa to rare Orkney barley as he demonstrates that species loss is linked to cultural loss.
Food literatures also demand that we confront ourselves and our blind spots. T. Colin Campbell’s The Future of Nutrition: An Insider’s Look at the Science, Why We Keep Getting It Wrong, and How to Start Getting It Right explores the evidence of the health benefits of plant-based diets. Crucially, this book exposes the cultural and political inertia protecting animal protein from scrutiny, reminding us that scientific research is never detached from society.
Boomers Daily 