london times book review

August 7, 1997 'London': Greed, Lust and Glory on the Thames By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT Books of the Times Read the First Chapter `LONDON' By Edward Rutherfurd Illustrated. 829 pages. Crown Publishers. $25.95. Unlike the New York of the televison police drama, London has never been the naked city, nor has its population ever been eight million. Still, a lot of people's stories are told in "London," Edward Rutherfurd's grand new novel, which traces the English city's history from the Druids to the Blitz. In fact, so many people's stories are told that you have to keep consulting a chart at the front of the book, which lists the names of 131 characters belonging to some seven families, who intermarry, change their names, make fortunes, sink to poverty, act heroically, practice villainy, fight duels, make love, worship God, counsel kings, preach sermons, build cathedrals, write poetry and do all the other things that have made English history for more than two millenniums. How on earth does one keep track of all these people through 21 episodes featuring the families' successive generations? The author makes it reasonably easy. A Cambridge University graduate whose previous novels are "Sarum," a 10,000-year history of the city of Salisbury, and "Russka," a history of Russia, Rutherfurd is consciously trying to apply James Michener's techniques to the United Kingdom. He gives the characters in "London" prominent physical traits like the long noses that characterize all the members of the Silversleeves family, or the patches of silver hair and webbed fingers that keep showing up on the Duckets, or rememberable surnames like Bull, Penny and Barnikel (so-called because one ancestor, a fearsome Viking warrior, disliked killing children and gave the order before each raid, "Bairn ni kel," or "Don't kill the children."). Each episode is a punchy tale made up of bite-size chunks ending in tiny cliffhangers (kerbhangers?) And telling of greed, lust, revenge, loyalty, bravery, cleanliness and reverence. We cheer the heroes as they rescue maidens in peril, and hiss the villains as they twirl their mustaches. Rutherfurd's storytelling is often not subtle. But then plot and character profundity is hardly the point. The purpose of "London" is to weave together the great events of English history and to embroider into that tapestry the famous figures. So typical episodes concern the invasion by Julius Caesar's legions in 54 B.C.; the pressures on Anglo-Saxons to convert to Christianity in the seventh century A.D.; the rise of chivalry and the Crusades; the uses of alchemy and the great stock-holding companies; the building of the Globe theater and St. Paul's Cathedral; the plague, the great London fire and Wat Tyler's rebellion, and the coming of the Industrial Revolution. We witness firsthand the lust of Henry VIII. We overhear Geoffrey Chaucer deciding to write "The Canterbury Tales." "Write it in Latin," advises a friend who thinks that English is evolving too quickly. "Don't let your life's work be swept away. Leave a monument, for future generations." We watch a Puritan character embarking for the Massachusetts Bay Colony aboard a ship with John Harvard. The fun of it all is seeing the pieces fall into place. The origins of words and place names: at the time of the Norman Conquest, "the land was divided into country shires, each with a shire reeve -- the sheriff -- who collected the King's taxes and oversaw justice." How to forge and link chain mail, design a coat of arms, build the Tower of London, transform base metal into gold, or at least convince the gullible that you can do so. Why the Glorious Revolution (1688) was neither revolutionary nor glorious, but "nonetheless, a great watershed" because "the religious and political disputes which had troubled England for more than a century reached a lasting resolution," at the cost mainly of the Catholic Church. Certain shortcomings are inevitable. It's hard to identify with a city, and you know how everything will turn out. London will survive and expand. Yet for all the fun of the novel, Rutherfurd has some serious points to make: as the god of his creation, he sits back and pares his fingernails, allowing villainy to be rewarded and virtue to be punished, and passing no final moral judgments on his characters. What he seems to mean by this is that the ways of history are inscrutable. More important to him is the wonderful distinctiveness of London. As one character representing his views puts it: "London was always a city of large numbers of aliens who quickly assimilated." He continues: "I doubt very much whether our Anglo-Saxon ancestry would make up one part in four. We are, quite simply, a nation of European immigrants with new graftings being added all the time. A genetic river, if you like, fed by any number of streams." And he pulls off some remarkable effects, typical of them a description of a Puritan character named O Be Joyful Carpenter listening to the chiming of London's bells: "Louder and louder now their mighty ringing grew, clanging and crashing down the major scale, drowning out every puny tune, until even the dome of St. Paul's itself seemed to be resonating in the din. And as he listened to this tremendous sound echoing all around him, so strident and so strong, it suddenly seemed to Carpenter that he could hear therein a thousand other voices: the Puritan voices of Bunyan and his pilgrim, the voice of his father Gideon and his saints, of Martha, why even of the Protestant Almighty himself. And, lost in their massive chorus, for a moment forgetting everything, even his own poor soul, he hugged his grandchildren and cried out in exultation: " 'Hear! Oh, hear the voice of the Lord!' "Then all the bells of London rang, and then O Be Joyful was joyful indeed." What a delightful way to get the feel of London and of English history. Return to the Books Home Page

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CITIZENS OF LONDON

The americans who stood with britain in its darkest, finest hour.

by Lynne Olson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2010

A nuanced history that captures the intensity of life in a period when victory was not a foregone conclusion.

How the initially fragile Anglo-American alliance was forged in the perilous days of World War II.

In early 1941, Britain was perilously close to being forced to surrender to Germany. Submarines were sinking hundreds of thousands of tons of merchant shipping each month, creating dangerous shortages of food and materiel necessary to fight the war, yet Franklin Roosevelt held back from authorizing U.S. military convoys to accompany ships. Former Baltimore Sun White House correspondent Olson ( Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England , 2007, etc.) re-creates the dramatic interplay of personalities and world politics, from the relationship between Winston Churchill (who understood that America was Britain’s lifeline) and FDR (who feared precipitating war with Germany and was suspicious of British imperialist motives), to the successful efforts of a small group of Americans living in London who played a vital behind-the-scenes role in bringing the two leaders together and forming an important alliance. These included Ambassador John Gilbert Winant, a former Republican governor who was nonetheless an ardent New Dealer; Edward R. Murrow, whose live broadcasts brought the reality of German terror bombings home to Americans; Averill Harriman, FDR’s special emissary who served as lend-lease coordinator and coached the prime minister on how to deal with the president; and Harry Hopkins, FDR’s closest advisor. Though many mingled with Britain’s “rich and powerful,” Murrow relished reporting about the “front-line” troops in the “Battle of London,” the “firemen, wardens, doctors, nurses, clergymen, telephone repairmen, and other workers who nightly risked their lives to aid the wounded, retrieve the dead, and bring their battered city back to life.” After Pearl Harbor, strains in the alliance emerged regarding the conduct of the war, with Dwight Eisenhower playing a crucial on-the-scene role in integrating the U.S.-British military command.

Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-4000-6758-9

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2009

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

The osage murders and the birth of the fbi.

by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.

During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann ( The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession , 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

GENERAL HISTORY | TRUE CRIME | UNITED STATES | FIRST/NATIVE NATIONS | HISTORY

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BOOK TO SCREEN

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen

by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

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London Review of Books: An Incomplete History review – 40 years of the LRB

I t is not unusual for periodicals to produce books applauding their own achievements, especially on their anniversaries, but this volume, put together by the editorial staff of the London Review of Books to celebrate the 40th anniversary of what they call “the paper”, is singular. Though a sort of anthology, it is more like a handsomely produced scrapbook, with photographic reproductions of original letters, draft articles and scribbled notes. (Great diplomacy has been shown in getting the permissions to reproduce some of these.) The result is a kind of coffee table book of intellectual contention.

The LRB began in 1979, when the labour dispute at the Times meant that the Times Literary Supplement was not appearing. Karl Miller , former editor of the Listener and head of English at University College London, decided to start a new review. His former deputy at the Listener, Mary-Kay Wilmers , joined him. This volume illustrates the LRB’s rickety yet oddly confident beginnings, first as an insert within the New York Review of Books, which initially provided necessary funding. It split off a year later. Wilmers had inherited some money – “I didn’t want it … So I found a use for it” – and when Miller left in 1992 Wilmers became editor, and is still.

The first issue still seems impressive, with William Empson on A Midsummer Night’s Dream , John Bayley’s review of William Golding’s Darkness Visible , and new poems by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Pages reproduced from early issues are, however, forbidding: unbroken columns of print as far as the eye can see. The LRB demonstrated its intellectual seriousness by allowing contributors unparalleled wordage. (Cannily, the compilers have chosen to reprint only tantalising snippets of interesting items rather than whole pieces.)

We see the page from Miller’s jotter with its list of desired contributors, most of whom are eventually nabbed. A few grand refuseniks are commemorated. Karl Popper, both lofty and needy, had his assistant at LSE tell the LRB that he didn’t write reviews but would be “interested to know if you have published reviews of his own books”. Of the 66 well-known names on Miller’s intellectual celebrity list, just six are women. There is later some fretting about the predominance of male contributors in the LRB’s recent as well as distant history.

It may seem odd to have a coffee table book where the pictures are of texts, but many of these are surprisingly expressive. There is the extraordinary typed letter from the poet Laura Riding complaining about Martin Seymour-Smith’s biography of her former partner, Robert Graves. “Mr Miller!” it begins, before expressing indignation in rambling sentences, where the very print – letters overtyped, words crossed out – is a chart of her feelings. It is a reminder of what an eloquent mess a typewriter could make. In contrast, the thickly but precisely corrected typescript of Julian Barnes’s Diary article about the Booker prize (“posh bingo”) is a diagram of fastidiousness.

We get the graphic drama, as it were, of the handwritten letter, in what looks like blue felt-tip, from Bruce Chatwin in 1988, protesting against an article about Aids by John Ryle – indeed protesting at the very use of the word “Aids”. The un-joined-up script somehow makes the repressed fury all the clearer. Differently eloquent is the magnified note of thanks to Frank Kermode, for his review of The Blue Flower , from Penelope Fitzgerald, written in a hand both eccentric and highly legible: “I don’t know whether you’d agree that writing, like teaching, produces considerable spells of depression & moments of great happiness.”

Somehow it is great to see the actual faxed page of an extremely anxious lawyer’s advice about a Christopher Hitchens piece on Conrad Black. “The real problem comes with Christopher Hitchens’s opinions about Mr Black – that he is a mad, tyrannical egotist, a sinister eccentric, a megalomaniac.” There is also a problem with the Labour politician Michael Meacher being designated “a prefect with a reputation for frigid sadism”. An editorial pen has written “cut” alongside both offending flowers of rhetoric.

There are some good spats. Here is Al Alvarez’s ex‑wife, Ursula Creagh, reviewing his book Life After Marriage: Scenes from a Divorce – and then, for good measure, Kermode writing to Miller to express his indignation at this “virtually inexcusable” choice of reviewer. “I do not believe in ‘unprejudiced’ reviewing,” Miller unanswerably replies, signing off with the sad acknowledgement that “the time has come for us to have no more to do with one another”. What Dr Johnson called “the acrimony of scholiasts” gets its delicious due. In 1993 it is both Elaine Showalter v Camille Paglia and Judith Butler portentously denouncing Terry Eagleton.

The LRB likes to show the LRB in process. On the one hand, pages proudly display memorandums in which the staff debate hyphens and the best ways to split words across the end of lines. On the other hand, we get the cock-ups over arty covers that turned out to be rubbish. LRB editors are exacting and are often themselves gifted writers (Andrew O’Hagan, Susannah Clapp, John Lanchester). They also have a collective reputation for overconfidence, illustrated in some of these pages. O’Hagan explains how staff disliked the last lines of poems that they were printing. “They were often too ‘last-line-y’.” So some were just docked. There is an example here (“Cockcrow”) from Patricia Beer, with her terse, infuriated letter of complaint. “The poem is, of course, ruined,” she writes, with justification.

Showing process also means displaying political choices. Here is Wilmers’s letter to Anne Applebaum, explaining that the journal had refused her review of a book on the last days of the Soviet Union because it spent too much time reminding the readers “that Stalin was bad”. There is Hitchens, once a favourite son who faxed in copious copy at all hours, being disinvited to the intellectual gathering when his geopolitics shifted. The book reproduces some of the notorious collection of responses by LRB contributors to 9/11, with Marjorie Perloff’s outrage that most think that, in a phrase she picks up from Mary Beard’s piece, “the United States had it coming”. As Wilmers nicely observes, “Beard didn’t quite say that, though she didn’t wholly not”.

Devotees will appreciate the well-deserved tribute to advertising manager David Rose, who pioneered the LRB’s famous personal ads (nowadays but shadows of their former selves, sadly). The book reproduces the very first such ads, from October 1998. Some of which deploy poetry, bursts of Spanish or allusions to the writings of Jacques Lacan – but some of which have a bluntness unmatched in the paper itself. “Bald, short, fat and ugly male, 53 seeks short-sighted woman with tremendous sexual appetite.”

“It’s not gossipy, cosy or cliquey,” observes long-time contributor Alan Bennett . But, in a mostly productive way, it is cliquey. It has always had favourites and has nurtured them. With pages catching the work of writers including Lorna Sage and Jenny Diski, this celebratory volume looks like a justification of that habit. There is a leading instance. Kermode evidently got over being told by Miller that this was the end and eventually contributed over 200 pieces (more than anyone else). That is the equivalent of at least 10 lengthy books. With his unrivalled ability to “hover as a writer between academia and journalism”, he was the LRB’s tutelary spirit. A good role model to leave us with.

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