Literary Review

3 weeks ago | literaryreview.co.uk | Graydon Carter

Can Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair from 1992 to 2017, possibly be that nice? His friends – and there are lots, going back forever – say he is. And he comes across in this delicious autobiography as almost excessively level-headed and bright-side-of-lifeish.

3 weeks ago | literaryreview.co.uk | Greg Grandin

‘South America’, declared the North American Review in the early 19th century, ‘will be to North America what Asia and Africa are to Europe.’ ‘Not quite,’ says Greg Grandin. But also not for want of trying. America, América is the by turns woeful, despairing and ironic tale of the USA’s sustained attempts to turn its southern neighbours into clients or dependencies, if not colonies.

3 weeks ago | literaryreview.co.uk | Shaun Walker

Like many who work in secret intelligence services, Vladimir Putin was heavily influenced by spy fiction. His imagination was coloured by novels and films, and he spoke of his amazement that ‘one man’s efforts could achieve what whole armies could not. One spy could decide the fate of thousands of people.’ Putin was especially entranced by the immensely popular television series Seventeen Moments of Spring, first shown in 1973 and often repeated.

1 month ago | literaryreview.co.uk | Natasha Brown

Natasha Brown’s second novel begins as an exposé written by a journalist unravelling a mystery. A solid gold bar belonging to a banker has gone missing from his farmhouse; it was previously used to knock out the leader of an illegal rave being held there. The episode, the journalist writes, is a ‘modern parable … exposing the fraying fabric of British society’. Brown relishes mocking the overblown tone of the type of investigative article that routinely goes viral on Twitter.

1 month ago | literaryreview.co.uk | Patrick Maguire |Gabriel Pogrund

Where does power lie within Keir Starmer’s strange government? In the case of other recent administrations, the question of who held power was relatively easy to answer. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown shared it awkwardly and stressfully – their government was close to a duopoly. Follow closely the amicable dance between Cameron and Osborne, with the occasional swerve towards Clegg, and the dynamics of the potentially complex coalition were easy to read.