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Editor Nancy Sladek Deputy Editor Tom Fleming Assistant Editor David Gelber Contributing Editors Jonathan Beckman Michael Burleigh • Sara Wheeler • Philip Womack Editorial & Marketing Assistant Michael Delgado Marketing Manager Constance Watson Advertising Manager Terry Finnegan Classified Advertising David Sturge Founding Editor Dr Anne Smith Cover Illustration Chris Riddell

The Literary Review, incorporating Quarto, is published monthly f rom: 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • ISSN 0144 4360 Tel: 020 7437 9392 • editorial@literaryreview.co.uk letters@literaryreview.co.uk All subscription enquiries and changes of address to: Literary Review Subscriptions, The Maltings, West Street, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH • Tel: +44 (0) 1778 395 165 subscriptions@warnersgroup.co.uk All advertising enquiries to: Terry Finnegan, Literary Review, 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • Tel: 020 7437 9392 terry@literaryreview.co.uk • david.sturge@btopenworld.com Print by: CPUK Print Publishing Ltd, www.cp-uk.co.uk Distributed to newsagents worldwide by: Seymour Distribution Ltd • Tel: 020 7429 4000 Distributed to bookshops by: Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN • Tel: 020 8986 4854 Designed by Cog Design Literary Review is set in Adobe Caslon and Janet. The latter is a digitisation of an engraved typeface designed by the artist and typographer Reynolds Stone, and named after his wife.

Literary Review | march 2023 2

d i a r y Richard Smyth travellers Lucy Moore

Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire Nandini Das Robert Bickers

Chinese Dreams in Romantic England: The Life and Times of Thomas Manning Edward Weech Peter Davidson

A Grand Tour Journal 1820-1822: The Awakening of the Man Edward Geoff rey Stanley man & earth Felipe Fernández-Armesto

The Earth Transformed: An Untold History Peter Frankopan Oliver Balch

Urban Jungle: Wilding the City Ben Wilson philosophy Julian Baggini

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Enquiry and Hope Sarah Bakewell Jonathan Rée

A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900–60 Nikhil Krishnan corridors of power Angus Reilly

G-Man: J Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century Beverly Gage Malachi O’Doherty

Mary Lou McDonald: A Republican Riddle Shane Ross Michael White

Politics, Poverty and Belief: A Political Memoir Frank Field art & photography Dominic Green

Surrealists in New York: Atelier 17 and the Birth of Abstract Expressionism Charles Darwent Rosamund Bartlett

Aleksandr Rodchenko: Photography in the Time of Stalin Aglaya K Glebova way of the wor l d David Laws

Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? Paul Johnson