Vol. 43 No. 12 · 17 June 2021

Browse other issues from this year

Cover Artist

Anne Rothenstein

Ian Penman

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown. Fourth Estate, 642 pp., £9.99, March, 978 0 00 834003 2
The Beatles and Sixties Britain by Marcus Collins. Cambridge, 382 pp., £90, March 2020, 978 1 108 47724 6
The Beatles in Context edited by Kenneth Womack. Cambridge, 372 pp., £74.99, January 2020, 978 1 108 41911 6

Letters

Susie Thomas, Julia Prewitt Brown, Francis Reavley, Gregory Klyve, Kieran Setiya, James Russell, Benjamin Midler, Roger Berger, Norman Dombey, Brian Reffin Smith

Marianne Boruch

Poem: ‘Dear Thus and So. Dear Eventually’

Tessa Hadley

The True History of the First Mrs Meredith and Other Lesser Lives by Diane Johnson. NYRB, 242 pp., £14.99, July 2020, 978 1 68137 445 1

Tariq Ali

Muhammad by Maxime Rodinson, translated by Anne Carter. NYRB, 373 pp., £14.99, March 2021, 978 1 68137 492 5

William Davies

Short Cuts: Friend or Threat

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

Each rock has two names

Francesca Wade

At the Whitechapel: Eileen Agar

James Romm

Rome Is Burning by Anthony Barrett. Princeton, 447 pp., £25, December 2020, 978 0 691 17231 6

Michael Wood

At the Movies: ‘Mandabi’

Alex de Waal

Steal, Burn, Rape, Kill

Niamh Gallagher

The Partition: Ireland Divided, 1885-1925 by Charles Townshend. Allen Lane, 368 pp., £20, April, 978 0 241 30086 2

Lucie Elven

I Used to Be Charming by Eve Babitz. NYRB, 448 pp., £14.99, January 2020, 978 1 68137 379 9

Jorie Graham

Poem: ‘Cage’

Stuart Jeffries

Correspondence 1923-66: Theodor W. Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer edited by Wolfgang Schopf, translated by Susan Reynolds and Michael Winkler. Polity, 537 pp., £35, November 2020, 978 0 7456 4923 8
Kracauer: A Biography by Jörg Später, translated by Daniel Steuer. Polity, 584 pp., £35, September 2020, 978 1 5095 3301 5

Colin Burrow

On Fiona Benson

Adam Mars-Jones

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford. Faber, 336 pp., £16.99, February, 978 0 571 33648 7

Edmund Gordon

Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor. Fourth Estate, 288 pp., £14.99, April, 978 0 00 820490 7

Freddie Mason

At the Hayward: Matthew​ Barney

Sharon Marcus

Female Husbands: A Trans History by Jen Manion. Cambridge, 350 pp., £17.99, March 2020, 978 1 108 48380 3
Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from 19th-Century France by Rachel Mesch. Stanford, 344 pp., £24.99, May 2020, 978 1 5036 0673 9

Patrick McGuinness

Diary: Oxford by Train

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