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contributors Nigel Andrew has recently completed a short book on butterflies. J S Barnes’s most recent novels are Dracula’s Child and The City of Dr Moreau. Piers Brendon is writing a personal memoir of Tom Sharpe. Fergus Butler-Gallie’s Priests de la Résistance! is out in paperback. Frances Cairncross is a former journalist for The Economist, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, and Chair of the Court of Heriot-Watt University. Clare Clark’s new novel, Trespass, will be published by Virago in August. Charles Clarke worked for the Office of the Leader of the Opposition from 1983 to 1992 and in the Labour government from 1998 to 2006. Norma Clarke is writing a sequel to her family memoir, Not Speaking. Peter Conrad’s The Mysteries of Cinema (Thames & Hudson) was published last year. Natasha Cooper, who also writes as N J Cooper, is a crime writer and critic. Ian Critchley is a freelance writer and editor. Barnaby Crowcroft is writing a new history of the British Empire. Howard Davies is chair of the Natwest Group and a former deputy governor of the Bank of England. His latest book, The Chancellors, was published in May. Adam Douglas is a rare-book specialist at Peter Harrington. Michael Eaude’s A People’s History of Catalonia will be published by Pluto in September. Claudia FitzHerbert was until recently books editor at The Oldie. Mark Galeotti is an honorary professor at UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies and the author of We Need To Talk About Putin (Penguin, 2019). Claudia Gold is author of King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts. Patrick Graney is a freelance writer. John Gribbin is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sussex and author of Six Impossible Things: The Mysteries of the Subatomic World. Tanya Harrod is working on a double study of Rolf and Margaret Gardiner. Her Humankind: Ruskin Spear – Class, Culture and Art in 20th-Century Britain appeared earlier this year. Ben Hutchinson is Professor of European Literature at the University of Kent. His books include Rilke’s Poetics of Becoming (2006) and The Midlife Mind (2020). Mathew Lyons is writing a book on the dissolution of the monasteries. Gordon Marsden was MP for Blackpool South between 1997 to 2019 and is a former editor of History Today. Rana Mitter is author of China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard). George Morris recently completed a PhD at Cambridge. Francesca Peacock is a freelance arts writer. Lucy Popescu is the editor of the refugee anthologies A Country of Refuge and A Country to Call Home. Kevin Power is the author of White City (Scribner) and The Written World: Essays and Reviews (Lilliput). James Purdon is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews. He recently edited British Literature in Transition, 1900– 1920: A New Age? (Cambridge University Press). Diane Purkiss’s new book English Food: A People’s History will be published by HarperCollins in November. Donald Rayfield’s biography Anton Chekhov: A Life was published in an expanded edition by Garnett Press last year. Tim Richardson’s recent books include Cambridge College Gardens (2019) and Sissinghurst (2020). Sean Russell is an editor at The Independent. He is currently working on his first novel. Alec Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and author of Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (2019). Anna Sherman’s first book, The Bells of Old Tokyo, was published by Picador in 2019. Christopher Silvester’s next book will be called The Gods Arise: Inventing Hollywood Society, 1910–1927. Joan Smith’s Home Grown, shortlisted for the Airey Neave Memorial Book Prize 2019–20, is now out in paperback. Philip Thomas is visiting academic professor at the University of Bristol and a postdoctoral fellow at Fukushima Medical University. Igor Toronyi-Lalic is arts editor at The Spectator and artistic co-director of the London Contemporary Music Festival. Alex von Tunzelmann is a historian and screenwriter. Her latest book, Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History, was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2022. Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator. His latest book, The Good, the Bad and the Greedy: Why We’ve Lost Faith in Capitalism, was published by Biteback in 2021. Nicholas Vincent is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia and author of King John: An Evil King? (Penguin). Stephen Vines latest book is Defying the Dragon: Hong Kong and the World’s Largest Dictatorship (Hurst). He spent more than three decades in Hong Kong as a journalist before making a rapid, forced departure last year. Edward Weech is librarian at the Royal Asiatic Society. His book Chinese Dreams in Romantic England: The Life and Times of Thomas Manning will be published later this year. Frances Wilson’s most recent book, Burning Man: The Ascent of D H Lawrence, is published by Bloomsbury. Philip Womack’s latest novel for the young is Wildlord. Literary Review | july 2022 4
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donald rayfield Four Years That Shook the World Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917–1921 By Antony Beevor (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 576pp £30) history Bolshevik demonstrators scattered by machine gun fire, Petrograd 1917 Almost every year since the Soviet archives opened in 1991, a new his- tory in English of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War has been published. Russian archives now release only a trickle, yet hitherto unknown memoirs, diaries and photographs still surface, and historians do not stop arguing about the causes, the determining factors and even the outcome of the unprecedentedly cruel and violent implosion of the Russian Empire. Antony Beevor brings to his book some forty-seven years’ experience of writing about wars and catastrophes. Perhaps for the first time, Russia’s history between 1917 and 1921 is examined by a military historian capable of explaining why so many heroic campaigns ended in a rout and why a rabble army achieved victory. It is a story of appalling incompetence and the stupid wastage of men, goodwill and materiel, with just an occasional flash of genius, such as when Trotsky journeys by luxury train across western Russia and inspires to enthusiastic self-sacrifice men who were only months earlier demoralised deserters. Particularly refreshing is Beevor’s unsparing criticism of the so-called ‘Allied’ intervention, in which British, French, Italian, Japanese, American and Finnish (and later Polish, Czechoslovak, Hungarian and even German) forces each pursued uncoordinated, sometimes conflicting aims and generally made the situation worse. Winston Churchill, in particular, emerges as a deluded optimist, ignoring Lloyd George’s cautions, believing that mad, self-glorifying White generals, given sufficient munitions, could win the Civil War. If Beevor’s book had appeared in the 1930s, Churchill would never have been allowed to lead Britain’s war effort. Beevor is a better narrator than most of his competitors: he is witty and detached, with an eye for telling details and anecdotes. The first half of this chronologically organised book, taking the reader up to the end of 1918, has, like the events themselves, a logic that is easy to follow: Bolshevik coups in Moscow and Petrograd gradually engendered resistance all over the Russian Empire, and a White Army of many officers and too few soldiers confronted a Red Army of many soldiers and too few officers. The narrative becomes tangled, however, when it reaches the confusion of 1919–20, at the end of which period it was finally clear to all except the most deluded that the Reds had triumphed. By 1919, the Civil War involved not just Reds and Whites, but also Greens (armed peasant groups), ‘left’ (violent) and ‘right’ (garrulous) Socialist Revolutionaries, Cossacks of several persuasions and numerous ethnic minorities – Kalmyks, Tatars, Chinese (including many railway labourers who went on to form secret police detachments), newly independent Estonians, Latvians and Ukrainians. All of them were in fluid opposition or alliance with one another, united only by their readiness to rob, rape, torture and kill. For this period, chronology alone is inadequate; one needs to be a geographer to follow the conflict as it flared up in the Siberian tundra or the Kuban steppe. Even with the maps that Beevor provides, these seemingly disconnected confrontations are hard to fit july 2022 | Literary Review 5

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contributors

Nigel Andrew has recently completed a short book on butterflies. J S Barnes’s most recent novels are Dracula’s Child and The City of Dr Moreau. Piers Brendon is writing a personal memoir of Tom Sharpe. Fergus Butler-Gallie’s Priests de la Résistance! is out in paperback. Frances Cairncross is a former journalist for The Economist, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, and Chair of the Court of Heriot-Watt University. Clare Clark’s new novel, Trespass, will be published by Virago in August. Charles Clarke worked for the Office of the Leader of the Opposition from 1983 to 1992 and in the Labour government from 1998 to 2006. Norma Clarke is writing a sequel to her family memoir, Not Speaking. Peter Conrad’s The Mysteries of Cinema (Thames & Hudson) was published last year. Natasha Cooper, who also writes as N J Cooper, is a crime writer and critic. Ian Critchley is a freelance writer and editor. Barnaby Crowcroft is writing a new history of the British Empire. Howard Davies is chair of the Natwest Group and a former deputy governor of the Bank of England. His latest book, The Chancellors, was published in May. Adam Douglas is a rare-book specialist at Peter Harrington. Michael Eaude’s A People’s History of Catalonia will be published by Pluto in September. Claudia FitzHerbert was until recently books editor at The Oldie. Mark Galeotti is an honorary professor at UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies and the author of We Need To Talk About Putin (Penguin, 2019). Claudia Gold is author of King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts. Patrick Graney is a freelance writer. John Gribbin is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sussex and author of Six Impossible Things: The Mysteries of the Subatomic World.

Tanya Harrod is working on a double study of Rolf and Margaret Gardiner. Her Humankind: Ruskin Spear – Class, Culture and Art in 20th-Century Britain appeared earlier this year. Ben Hutchinson is Professor of European Literature at the University of Kent. His books include Rilke’s Poetics of Becoming (2006) and The Midlife Mind (2020). Mathew Lyons is writing a book on the dissolution of the monasteries. Gordon Marsden was MP for Blackpool South between 1997 to 2019 and is a former editor of History Today. Rana Mitter is author of China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard). George Morris recently completed a PhD at Cambridge. Francesca Peacock is a freelance arts writer. Lucy Popescu is the editor of the refugee anthologies A Country of Refuge and A Country to Call Home. Kevin Power is the author of White City (Scribner) and The Written World: Essays and Reviews (Lilliput). James Purdon is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews. He recently edited British Literature in Transition, 1900– 1920: A New Age? (Cambridge University Press). Diane Purkiss’s new book English Food: A People’s History will be published by HarperCollins in November. Donald Rayfield’s biography Anton Chekhov: A Life was published in an expanded edition by Garnett Press last year. Tim Richardson’s recent books include Cambridge College Gardens (2019) and Sissinghurst (2020). Sean Russell is an editor at The Independent. He is currently working on his first novel.

Alec Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and author of Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (2019).

Anna Sherman’s first book, The Bells of Old Tokyo, was published by Picador in 2019.

Christopher Silvester’s next book will be called The Gods Arise: Inventing Hollywood Society, 1910–1927.

Joan Smith’s Home Grown, shortlisted for the Airey Neave Memorial Book Prize 2019–20, is now out in paperback.

Philip Thomas is visiting academic professor at the University of Bristol and a postdoctoral fellow at Fukushima Medical University.

Igor Toronyi-Lalic is arts editor at The Spectator and artistic co-director of the London Contemporary Music Festival.

Alex von Tunzelmann is a historian and screenwriter. Her latest book, Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History, was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2022.

Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator. His latest book, The Good, the Bad and the Greedy: Why We’ve Lost Faith in Capitalism, was published by Biteback in 2021.

Nicholas Vincent is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia and author of King John: An Evil King? (Penguin).

Stephen Vines latest book is Defying the Dragon: Hong Kong and the World’s Largest Dictatorship (Hurst). He spent more than three decades in Hong Kong as a journalist before making a rapid, forced departure last year.

Edward Weech is librarian at the Royal Asiatic Society. His book Chinese Dreams in Romantic England: The Life and Times of Thomas Manning will be published later this year.

Frances Wilson’s most recent book, Burning Man: The Ascent of D H Lawrence, is published by Bloomsbury.

Philip Womack’s latest novel for the young is Wildlord.

Literary Review | july 2022 4

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