Displaying articles for: February 2010

Lola Montès

A circus beauty's tale is the heart of a masterwork that has left an enduring mark on filmmakers around the world. Read more...

Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks

A long-awaited peek into the working mind of a literary genre's most celebrated master. Read more...

Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen

An unforgettable voice soared above the troubled life of a "Domestic grief goddess." Read more...

Psycho Too

Will Self and Ralph Steadman go on another head(y) trip. Read more...

Sexually, I'm More of a Switzerland: More Personal Ads from the London Review of Books

"This advert may well be the Cadillac of all lonely hearts adverts…"

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The Routes of Man

The award-winning author of Newjack looks at how roads all over the globe serve to bind together -- and divide -- those who use them.

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The Whale

A writer's obsession with the ocean's giants leads him into deep waters. Read more...

February 11: Nelson Mandela was released from prison on this day in 1990. The recent anthology Conversations with Myself samples from decades of archived material in an attempt to "give readers access to the Nelson Mandela…

Once held close to the chest and protected by well-understood laws, the valuable information about our lives that we blithely disclose with our every keystroke has the potential…

Books CDs, DVDs to know about now
Alice James

"The moral and philosophical questions that Henry wrote up as fiction and William as science," Jean Strouse writes of her subject's more famous brothers, "Alice simply lived." It took a biographer of sensitivity and brilliance to give that "simply" the profundity it deserves, and the resulting book, now reissued in the peerless NYRB Classics series, is one of the richest life stories you'll ever read.

Midnight in Austenland

The world of Jane Austen's fiction has long been an imaginative playground for writers and readers of a certain stripe. Shannon Hale's Austenland wittily took the next step, setting comic romance in a faux-Pemberly resort for the Darcy-smitten. Her latest returns for more Regency fun, but with a twist: does murder stalk Pembrook Park?

Humble Homes, Simple Shacks...

Childlike retreat? Arts and crafts challenge? Frugal and eco-friendly living option? The notion of the "tiny house" has the surprising potential to fire the imagination. In this exuberant volume of sketches, plans, and commentary, the artist Derek Diedricksen shares his infectious enthusiasm for the idea of the micro-mansion.