"He divides people: those who value heart and flair, against those who are good at adding up on their fingers, sucking their teeth and shaking their heads. If you condemn him you are, like Robespierre, more in sorrow than in anger." That's Hilary Mantel on George-Jacques Danton, from her fantastic review of a new Danton biography ("fantastic" here refers to the review rather than the book, which Mantel is somewhat iffy about) in the new London Review of Books. I'm about halfway through the current issue, which I am reading straight through and uniformly enjoying: It is, quite possibly, the indispensable periodical I get these days in terms of breadth, brilliance, and the quality of the writing. Consider this an endorsement.
Also endorsed: The Criterion Collection's recent DVD release of Andrzej Wajda's Danton, which, while not terribly subtle in its hero-worship, is a pretty great movie. Sadly, there are no extra fart jokes, but those that remain from the original still kill.
Haven't RTFL, but Hilary Mantel's novel Beyond Black is highly entertaining and creepy. That is all.
viz.
Vases, Tea Sets, Cigars, His Own Watercolours.
Christopher Clark: Nazi Toffs
As the American scholar Jonathan Petropoulos observed in his study of the princes of Hessen, if princes had constituted a profession, 'they would have rivalled physicians as the most Nazified in the Third Reich (doctors' membership peaked in 1937 at 43 per cent)'.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n07/clar10_.html
LRB is good and reasonably priced. Getting the TLS is like getting buried. I once loved the Spectator, but oh has it gone bad.
Yeah, like a nervous Victorian, Peter Stothard had a bell fitted to the lid. He keeps pulling the string but no-one comes.
That's exactly it. These papers are essentially 19th century creations. The Victorian notion of a "literary" (we have to use quotes on this word nowadays) person, after having been fairly strong through WWII or so, is finally almost completely expired. The papers are surely following it.
I've been shedding subscriptions these past few years almost as much as I've been shedding jobs, but the LRB is just too good to relinquish. And oh, those personal ads... http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/24/london-review-books-personal-ads
Opted not to renew my LRB subscription this year, found it a bit hit and miss recently, and subscribed to Boston Review in its place. (Just looked at LRB resubscribe rates: US = $42, UK = $107.)