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Vol. 43 No. 14 · 15 July 2021
Sheila Fitzpatrick
The Scent of Empires: Chanel No. 5 and Red Moscow by Karl Schlögel, translated by Jessica Spengler. Polity, 201 pp., £20, May, 978 1 5095 4659 6
Letters
George De Stefano, Thomas Nagel, Robert Zaretsky, Beina Xu, Angus Gowland, Bernard Richards, Fitzroy Morrissey, Michela Wrong, Ishmael Reed, Terry Bushell, John Eliot Spofford, Martin Rose
Colin Burrow
Some Versions of Pastoral by William Empson, edited by Seamus Perry. Oxford, 496 pp., £80, November 2020, 978 0 19 965966 1 The Structure of Complex Words by William Empson, edited by Helen Thaventhiran and Stefan Collini. Oxford, 672 pp., £95, November 2020, 978 0 19 871343 2
Barbara Newman
Dante’s Bones: How a Poet Invented Italy by Guy Raffa. Harvard, 370 pp., £28.95, May 2020, 978 0 674 98083 9 Poetry in Dialogue in the Duecento and Dante by David Bowe. Oxford, 225 pp., £60, November 2020, 978 0 19 884957 5 Dante’s Christian Ethics: Purgatory and Its Moral Contexts by George Corbett. Cambridge, 233 pp., £75, March 2020, 978 1 108 48941 6 Why Dante Matters: An Intelligent Person’s Guide by John Took. Bloomsbury, 207 pp., £20, October 2020, 978 1 4729 5103 8 Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio: Literature, Doctrine, Reality by Zygmunt Barański. Legenda, 658 pp., £75, February 2020, 978 1 78188 879 7
Jeremy Harding
Short Cuts: Nautical Dramas
Malcolm Gaskill
The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1700 by Jennifer M. Rampling. Chicago, 408 pp., £28, December 2020, 978 0 226 71070 9
James Meek
Who holds the welding rod?
Michael Wood
At the Movies: ‘The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard’
Christopher L. Brown
Murder on the Middle Passage: The Trial of Captain Kimber by Nicholas Rogers. Boydell, 267 pp., £16.99, April 2020, 978 1 78327 482 6 The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery by Michael Taylor. Bodley Head, 382 pp., £20, November 2020, 978 1 84792 571 8
Julia Smith
At the British Museum: ‘Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making of a Saint’
Niela Orr
Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler. Fourth Estate, 272 pp., £12.99, February, 978 0 00 836652 0
Joanna Biggs
Assembly by Natasha Brown. Hamish Hamilton, 105 pp., £12.99, June, 978 0 241 51570 9
Ange Mlinko
The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography by Hilary Holladay. Doubleday, 416 pp., £25, November 2020, 978 0 385 54150 3 Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich. Norton, 345 pp., £13.99, May 2021, 978 0 393 54142 7
Philip Clark
Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar by Oliver Craske. Faber, 672 pp., £12.99, June, 978 0 571 35086 5
Emily Berry
Poem: ‘Paris’
Nick Richardson
Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020 by M. John Harrison. Comma, 288 pp., £9.99, August 2020, 978 1 912697 28 1 The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison. Gollancz, 272 pp., £7.99, April, 978 0 575 09636 3
Richard Norton-Taylor
The Intelligence War against the IRA by Thomas Leahy. Cambridge, 356 pp., £18.99, March 2020, 978 1 108 72040 3
Ian Jack
Diary: Class 1H
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