Contemporary Review articles from May 2002

Contemporary Review archives from May 2002

Washington and the 'great game' in central Asia.
May 1, 2002... THE term 'great game' was originally coined by Rudyard Kipling to describe the nineteenth century Anglo-Russian rivalry for hegemony in Central Asia (see Contemporary Review, December 2001, p. 321). Now, this buzzword is being liberally...

Asylum seekers in Britain.
May 1, 2002... THERE are some 50 million displaced persons in the world today: of these, some 38 million remain in their own countries but have been driven from their desired place of residence. Twelve million have left their countries, though most of these...

Easing labour pains in Peru's childbirth culture.
May 1, 2002... WHEN Jenny Rodriguez attended her first hospital ante-natal checkup, health workers invited her to participate in classes for expectant mothers. 'We learn about the baby, we learn exercises and how to relax', she says enthusiastically....

Coping with the 'axis of evil'.
May 1, 2002... THE horrible attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 has compelled its leaders to undertake a profound reassessment of their nation's defence and foreign policies. The virtual world unanimity of sympathy for America and condemnation...

The fluctuations of William Golding's critical reputation.(Critical Essay)
May 1, 2002... AS an aspiring Ph.D. student in 1998, I asked myself which writers I had read extensively, which I had always enjoyed and in whose works I had always found something new when I returned to them. From a dwindling list, William Golding emerged. I...

A fitzwilliam room at the National Gallery. (Art Notes).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... A few pictures from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, have taken refuge in the London National Gallery whilst builders are at work in the Museum. They will enhance the Gallery's collection for a year from the end of May. In the meantime a...

Aelbert Cuyp at the National Gallery.
May 1, 2002... AFTER its trip to Pisanello's Italian duchies, the National Gallery has returned to the delta of the Rhine and, in its latest borrowed exhibition, settled on the Dordrecht of Aelbert Cuyp. Dordrecht stands sentinel on the confluence of the...

Holy wells in Britain and Ireland.
May 1, 2002... HOLY wells have featured for many centuries in the folk religion and social customs of Christianity in Britain and Ireland. Sometimes it has seemed difficult to separate the primordial pagan origins of holy well veneration in specific...

An English eccentric in Egypt.
May 1, 2002... THE British Isles have bequeathed to the world, among many important benefits, an agree able legacy of eccentrics, many of whom for one reason or another have discovered the full measure of their potential only when living abroad. The...

Historians look at Kennedy's Wars.(three books)
May 1, 2002... Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Laos, Cuba and Vietnam. Lawrence Freedman. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]20.00. 528 pages. ISBN 0-19-513453-2. A Noble Cause? America and the Vietnam War. Gerard J. DeGroot. Longman. [pounds sterling]17.99...

The Theory and practice of International Relations. (Reviews).
May 1, 2002... International Relations: Perspectives and Themes. Jill Steans and Lloyd Pettiford. Long-man. [pounds sterling]16.99 p.b. 235 pages. ISBN 0-582-32211-1. International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration: Power Security and...

Madam speaker. (Reviews).
May 1, 2002... Betty Boothroyd: The Autobiography. Century. [pounds sterling]17.99. 338 pages. ISBN 0-7126-7948-0. When, in 1987, Betty Boothroyd became one of his three deputies the Speaker of the House of Commons, Bernard Weatherill, presented the...

Ten seconds for John Sergeant. (Reviews).
May 1, 2002... Give Me Ten Seconds. John Sergeant. Macmillan. [pounds sterling]20.00. 308 pages. ISBN 0-333-90449-4. John Sergeant, the political editor of Independent Television News, has, as he acknowledges in this lively and outspoken book, much for...

The lure of ruins. (Reviews).
May 1, 2002... In Ruins. Christopher Woodward. Chatto and Windus. [pounds sterling]12.99. ISBN 0-701-1689-6. Great historians, artists, poets and latter-day dictators, as well as anonymous visitors, have gazed upon the ruins of ancient Rome with awe. For...

New and noteworthy. (Reviews).(UK history)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The island of Ireland continues to have its share of new titles investigating its tangled history. YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS has recently published Marcus Tanner's Ireland's Holy Wars: The Struggle for a Nation's Soul, 1500-2000 ([pounds...

Working for Victory: A Diary of Life in a Second World War Factory. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Working for Victory: A Diary of Life in a Second World War Factory. Sue Bruley, editor. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]20.00. 226 pages. ISBN 0-7509-2537-X. The author of this book established her credentials as an historian of women...

The British Peace Movement 1870-1914. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The British Peace Movement 1870-1914. Paul Laity. Clarendon Press, Oxford. [pounds sterling]40.00. 270 pages. ISBN 0-19-924835-4. British radicals, unlike their friends in Europe, believed that war could actually be abolished. In part this grew...

Arnhem. A. D. Harvey. Cassell & Co. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Arnhem. A. D. Harvey. Cassell & Co. 14.99 p.b. 217 pages. ISBN 0-304-35699-9. This volume takes a new look at 'Operation Market Garden', the largest airborne operation in military history. In particular it looks at the most controversial part...

The Rivals: The Intimate Story of a Political Marriage. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The Rivals: The Intimate Story of a Political Marriage. James Naughtie. Fourth Estate. [pounds sterling]16.99. 346 pages. ISBN 1-84115-473-3. Neither the 'intimate' nor the 'marriage' in the sub-title should be taken too seriously. Relations...

The Devil's Gardens: A History of Landmines. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The Devil's Gardens: A History of Landmines. Lydia Monin and Andrew Gallimore. Pimlico. [pounds sterling]12.50. 234 pages. ISBN 0-7126-6859-4. This 'Pimlico Original' is the book of a television series on landmines. The authors, who not...

The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution. Mark Roseman. Allen Lane: The Penguin Press. [pounds sterling]9.99. 152 pages. ISBN 0-71-399570-X. Prof. Roseman's short book is about the now famous meeting that took place in...

Europe in the High Middle Ages. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Europe in the High Middle Ages. William Chester Jordan. Allen Lane: The Penguin Press. [pounds sterling]25.00. 382 pages. ISBN 0-713-990-848. This first volume in the new eight-volume Penguin History of Europe is divided into four parts. The...

Isadora: A Sensational Life. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Isadora: A Sensational Life. Peter Kurth. Little, Brown. [pounds sterling]25.00. 652 pages. ISBN 0-316-85435-2. The author of this biography, first published in the U.S. last year, has also written on Anna Anderson ('Grand Duchess Anasiasia')...

Bridging the Atlantic: The Question of American Exceptionalism in Perspective. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Bridging the Atlantic: The Question of American Exceptionalism in Perspective. Elisabeth Glaser and Hermann Wellenreuther, editors. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]40.00. 310 pages. ISBN 0-521-78205-8. This collection of thirteen...

The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. Phillis Levin, editor. Penguin Books. [pounds sterling]9.99. 222 pages. ISBN 0-713-99529-7. The sonnet, with its obligatory fourteen lines and set structure (Italian...

Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty. Isaiah Berlin. Henry Hardy, editor. Chatto & Windus. [pounds sterling]20.00 182 pages. ISBN 0-701-17297-5. These six lectures by Sir Isaiah Berlin were first delivered on the BBC Radio's...

Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to the X Files. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to the X Files. Peter Knight. Routledge. [pounds sterling]48.00. 287 pages. ISBN 0-415-18977-2. Mankind has always loved talk of conspiracy to explain events: the Greeks did it with their mischievous gods and...

Reinventing Christianity: Nineteenth-Century Contexts. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Reinventing Christianity: Nineteenth-Century Contexts. Linda Woodhead, editor. Ashgate. [pounds sterling]45.00. 294 pages. ISBN 0-7546-1650-9. This collection eschews the standard debate as to whether the nineteenth century was an era of...

Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement. Derwent May. HarperCollins. [pounds sterling]25.00. 606 pages. ISBN 0-00-711449-4. With the demise of The Listener (whose one-time editor is the author of this history) the T.L.S....

A Foreign Field: A True Story of Love and Betrayal in the Great War. (Reviews).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... A Foreign Field: A True Story of Love and Betrayal in the Great War. Ben Macintyre. HarperCollins. [pounds sterling]14.99. 301 pages. ISBN 0-00-257122-6. The author of this book, at one time The Times' correspondent in Paris, tells his story at...

James Dyson's History of Great Inventions.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... James Dyson's History of Great Inventions. Robert Uhlig, editor. Constable. [pounds sterling]17.99. 188 pages. ISBN 1-84119-341-0. The editor is the Daily Telegraph's technology correspondent and in this lavishly illustrated book he traces the...

Family Life in the Long Nineteenth Century 1789-1913.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Family Life in the Long Nineteenth Century 1789-1913. David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli, editors. Yale University Press. [pounds sterling]30.00. 420 pages. ISBN 0-300-09090-0. This second volume in Yale's history of the European Family...

Russia: A State of Uncertainty.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Russia: A State of Uncertainty. Neil Robinson. Routledge. [pounds sterling]50.00. 187 pages. ISBN 0-415-27112-6. This latest title in Routledge's 'Postcommunist States and Nations' series looks at Russian history throughout the twentieth...

C.S. Lewis Then and Now.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... C.S. Lewis Then and Now. Wesley A. Kort. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]19.99. 194 pages. ISBN 0-19-514342-6. This title, which originated in America, is based on the author's experience of undergraduates eager to know more about...