1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF Telephone: 020 7782 5000 Fax: 020 7782 4966 [email protected] LETTERS 3 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 6 POETRY & BIOGRAPHY 7 Michael Caines Hannah Ellis, editor Dylan Thomas – A centenary celebration. Hilly Janes The Three Lives of Dylan Thomas. John Goodby, editor The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas – New centenary edition. John Goodby The Poetry of Dylan Thomas – Under the spelling wall BIOGRAPHY 9 Dinah Birch A. N. Wilson Victoria – A Life Nicola Shulman Sheila Heti, et al Women in Clothes. Lena Dunham Not That Kind of Girl – A young woman tells you what she’s learned Vivienne Westwood and Ian Kelly Vivienne Westwood FASHION & MEMOIRS 10 James Campbell J. Michael Lennon, editor Selected Letters of Norman Mailer Archbishop Pole, Rembrandt’s circles, Mummers, etc Mika Ross-Southall FOOD 12 Tom Jaine Luke Barr Provence, 1970 – M. F. K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the reinvention of American taste. Jean-Pierre Moullé and Denise Lurton Moullé French Roots – Two cooks, two countries and the beautiful food along the way. Joël Robuchon and Loïc Bienassis French Regional Food. Katrina Meynink Bistronomy – French food unbound Sandra M. Gilbert The Culinary Imagination – From myth to modernity Dan Jurafsky The Language of Food. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson Word of Mouth A t this time of the year it is common to hear the words “the Victorians invented Christmas”, often uttered by those who for some reason or other choose not to celebrate it too much. Christmas trees and cards can also be deemed delightfully German, an import abetted by the Queen’s beloved Consort, Prince Albert, and consequently even less guiltily ignored. This week Dinah Birch considers A. N. Wilson’s biography of Victoria, beginning with her position as probably the last British sovereign to sit in the royal tradition of those who “occupy two bodies – one earthly and mortal, the other mystical and quasi-divine”. A Life of Britain’s last empress must balance the competing demands of this duality and Wilson does so, Birch decides, “with buoyant assurance”. It is Albert who in Wilson’s view, is “the only member of the Royal family in recent history, or perhaps ever, who deserves the name of genius”. Few have ever claimed that German or British genius invented cooking, or indeed that Britons played any very significant part at all in what we quite rightly call cuisine. In one of four reviews on cookery matters this week Tom Jaine considers a batch of new books on the varieties of French contribution to the culinary arts, beginning in the year 1602, when the author of the “finest English recipe book of the seventeenth century” was packed off to Paris Carolin C. Young Kerstin Hoge COMMENTARY 16 Woman in white – Why Margery Kempe divides modern readers as much as she did her medieval audience Freelance TLS August 26, 1939 – Thomas’s wild tongue Anthony Bale Alan Taylor Then & Now ARTS 19 Cubism – The Leonard A. Lauder Collection (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow, editors Cubism – The Leonard A. Lauder Collection Georges Perec Portrait of a Man; Translated by David Bellos. Oulipo, la littérature en jeu(x) (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris) Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (National Theatre) Sherlock Holmes – The man who never lived and will never die (Museum of London) Patrick McCaughey Lauren Elkin David Horspool Jonathan Barnes FICTION 22 Edmund Gordon Margaret Atwood Stone Mattress. Hilary Mantel The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher Richard Ford Let Me Be Frank With You John Darnielle Wolf in White Van Peter Stamm All Days Are Night S. J. Naudé The Alphabet of Birds D. A. Mishani A Possibility of Violence Lucian Robinson Houman Barekat Alexander Starritt Alison Kelly Justin Warshaw CHRISTMAS QUIZ 25 CULTURAL STUDIES 26 Jacqueline Banerjee Jeffrey Richards The Golden Age of Pantomime. Linda Simon The Greatest Shows on Earth – A history of the circus John Lucas and Allan Chatburn A Brief History of Whistling. Steven Connor Beyond Words – Sobs, hums, stutters and other vocalizations John Payne to see what he could learn. For all the troubles of twentieth-century France, the reputation of “the patrimoine culinaire” remains “impressive” while “Britain remains whimpering on the sidelines”. Jaine cites a poem praising a British writer (pictured) who worked to even the score: “this is the cuisine / we might be eating still had we not read / Elizabeth David and begun to think / about the better ways we might be fed”. James Campbell notes how Norman Mailer’s letters, for all their critical and rhetorical power, reveal a man for whom neither Britain nor France were of great import. Michael Caines gives a vivid verdict on centenary tributes to Dylan Thomas. Tony Lurcock elegantly inserts dentistry into our Christmas quiz. PS SPORT 29 Toby Lichtig David Goldblatt The Game of Our Lives BIOGRAPHY 30 Jacques Rupnik Kathryn Murphy Victor Davis Hanson Douglas Field Michael Zantovsky Havel – A Life Ivan Klíma My Crazy Century – A memoir Andrew Roberts Napoleon the Great Stephen Tuck The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union Saladin Ambar Malcolm X at the Oxford Union IN BRIEF 34 LITERARY CRITICISM 36 Andrew Gallix Aaron Hillyer The Disappearance of Literature POETRY 37 Victor Sonkin Peter France and Robyn Marsack, editors After Lermontov FOOD 38 Darra Goldstein Monday Morning Cooking Club The Feast Goes On. Janna Gur Jewish Soul Food – From Minsk to Marrakesh Alan Bennett et al Meeting the Devil, etc This week’s contributors 39 NB 40 Conrad and Ford, Christmas 1914, Seamus Heaney J. C. Cover image: Caricature of Norman Mailer by Aislin (alias Terry Mosher), ink and felt pen on paper, 1973 © McCord Museum, Montréal, Canada; p2 © Topfoto ; p3 © p2 © Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images; p4 © Robert Belott/Alamy; p7 © Estate of Alfred Janes/Courtesy National Museum of Wales; p9 © Mary Evans Picture Library; p10 Michael Buckner/Getty Images; p11 © Elisa Leonelli/Rex Features; p12 © Bridgeman Art Library; p16 © Holmes Garden Photos/Alamy; p18 © Hulton Archive/ Getty Images; p19 ©Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection/ 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris; p21 © Etienne Lécroart/BnF; p22 © Aris Kalaizis/Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library; p26 © Liszt Collection/Bridgeman Art Library; p28 © akg-images; p29 © Simon Stacpoole/Offside; p30 © Socfoto/ Getty Images; p31© Tomas Krist/isifa/Getty Images; p32 © Bridgeman Art Library; p33 © Hulton Archive/Getty Images; p36 © Tate Images; p37 © akg-images The Times Literary Supplement (ISSN 0307661, USPS 021-626) is published weekly except a double issue in August and December by The Times Literary Supplement Limited, London UK, and distributed in the USA by OCS America Inc., 195 Anderson Avenue, Moonachie, NJ 07074-1621. Periodical postage paid at Moonachie NJ and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: please send address corrections to TLS, P0 Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834, USA. USA and Canadian retail newsstand copies distributed by Kable Distribution Services, 14 Wall Street, Suite 4C New York, New York 10005 TLS DECEMBER 19 & 26 2014