Quantcast

California Literary Review

Great Britain

Small Wars by Sadie Jones

by John R. Guthrie

January 19th, 2010

The conflict becomes a war in which, “…there was no truth. It was a nothing, laughable Mickey Mouse conflict; it was a sinister time of terror and repression. The British were misguided and ignorant; the Cypriots were lethargic and foolish. The Cypriots loved the British; the Cypriots hated the British. The British were torturers; the British were decent and honourable. EOKA were terrorists; EOKA were heroes.”

Churchill by Paul Johnson

by Julia Braun Kessler

December 1st, 2009

And Johnson reminds us of the memorable words he spoke after France capitulated: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’” Here the biographer also observes, “So the first true victory Britain won in the war was the victory of oratory and symbolism. Churchill was responsible for both.”

Love and Summer by William Trevor

by Mark Fitzgerald

November 19th, 2009

Why is it that summer can never last forever, especially when we want it to? The once long and amorous days wane too soon in circumscription. A small chill creeps down from the hills. Something is about to end. Then someone leaves town. Someone always leaves town.

Democracy: 1,000 Years in Pursuit of British Liberty by Peter Kellner

by Jem Bloomfeld

September 22nd, 2009

Magna Carta, that legendary document which is so frequently referred to in discussions of freedom, and which permeates our cultural history from Rudyard Kipling (“What say the reeds at Runnymede?”) to Tony Hancock (“Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?! Brave Hungarian peasant girl…”) was produced by a power struggle between the military aristocracy and the monarchy. Any resulting “liberty” for ordinary people was a waste product of the medieval warlord industry.

The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

by Katie Cappello

August 25th, 2009

She sees faces in the flaking walls of the kitchen, fears for the soul of a matriarch’s fox fur, and interprets the ever-changing moods of the decorative beer steins on the mantle. Gwenni is a contradictory combination of fearlessness and naiveté, unable to discern the boundary between her imaginative world and the real one. In this way, she recalls such classic girl heroines as Anne of Green Gables or Jo from Little Women. But it’s her similarity with another classic heroine, Nancy Drew, which really draws readers into her world.

In the Kitchen by Monica Ali

by Elinor Teele

August 13th, 2009

Yuri is a porter, one of Britain’s penniless immigrants that Ali would like us (and Gabe) to finally acknowledge. He dies alone in the kitchen’s basement, the victim of a tragic accident. Or is it more…?

Waiting for the Etonians by Nick Cohen

by Jem Bloomfeld

July 28th, 2009

Nick Cohen is undoubtedly one of Britain’s finest living polemicists, and Waiting for the Etonians will be a genuine treat for readers who have come to rely on his rigorous thinking, stylish phrase-making and carefully controlled rage. The book’s subtitle, Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England, reflects his despair at the current state of left-wing (or “left-ish”) thinking in Britain, which he sees as almost irrevocably compromised by post-modernism, cultural relativism and the focus-group politics of New Labour.

The Bolter by Frances Osborne

by Julia Braun Kessler

July 27th, 2009

She introduces a woman who may have upset those around her by her promiscuity, even nymphomania, drug use; but also gives us access to a fearless beauty with gifts of intelligence, wit, and extraordinary powers to attract the opposite sex. Then too, she reveals that her antics as combined with her endowments were nevertheless insufficient in her hunt for love and lasting affection.

Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell

by Jem Bloomfeld

February 24th, 2009

Much more serious, though, is the book’s take on the medieval world as a whole. Alongside the loud cynicism of its insistence that the battles are meaningless, the church is corrupt and the aristocracy live in a different world, Agincourt continually asserts a broadly positive, modern outlook.

Erskine Childers and The Riddle of the Sands

by Brett F. Woods

January 27th, 2009

Set against the backdrop of a yachting trip to the German coast, the story weds a tale of adventure with the reality of Britain’s imperial overreach thus beginning a genre that – as continued by the likes of Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, and John le Carré – has matured into one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the literate world.

California Literary Review on Facebook

Get The Latest California Literary Review Updates Delivered Free To Your Inbox!

Powered by FeedBlitz

Recent Comments: