Contemporary Review articles from September 2003

Contemporary Review archives from September 2003

Scholarly journals in the digital age.
September 1, 2003... THE economics of scholarly publishing are stark. According to statistics compiled by the Library and Statistics Unit, based at Loughborough University, journals purchased by research libraries in the UK have increased in price an average of 11...

Foreign policy and conspiracy.
September 1, 2003... IN the early melodramas about international conspiracy, when the Blue Train appeared to exist for no other purpose than carrying anarchists and women with a past from one end of Europe to another, the villains always seemed to have Middle...

The fiftieth anniversary of the East German uprisings.
September 1, 2003... IT is commonly believed that the economic miracle and Western integration of the Federal Republic of Germany in the post-war period served to divert attention from war crimes and from a deep sense of social disorientation. As Germany today...

Nation-building in Afghanistan.
September 1, 2003... AFGHANISTAN'S liberation from Taliban role has been occasion for both joyous celebration and apprehension over potential insecurities. The US-led military offensive against the Taliban, code-named 'Operation Enduring Freedom', began on 7...

Is Britain still in decline?(includes review of Law and Opinion in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland)
September 1, 2003... OVER the past fifty years, the world has seen Great Britain lose much of its greatness. This article is referring to the ability of Great Britain to be a world player in the political and economic sphere. Britain's decline may be seen by the...

The troubled history of chemical and biological warfare.
September 1, 2003... THE controversy over Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction is simply the most recent in a long line of events in the troubled history of chemical and biological warfare. This article examines two events that show that the Germans and British also...

A Harvard collection at the National Gallery.(A Private Passion: Harvard's Winthrop Collection)
September 1, 2003... THE latest exhibition at the National Gallery is called A Private Passion: Harvard's Winthrop Collection, although one would not readily call the collector, Grenville Winthrop (1864-1943) passionate. A rich Manhattan lawyer, introverted and...

The enduring relevance of George Orwell.
September 1, 2003... THIS year marks the centenary of the birth of Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell. Although dead for over a half century, Orwell remains one of the most read and most quoted authors of the twentieth century. His two best-known...

Britain, America and Vietnam.(All the Way with JFK? Britain, the US and the Vietnam War)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... All the Way with JFK? Britain, the US and the Vietnam War. Peter Busch. Oxford University Press. 30.00 [pounds sterling]. 240 pages. ISBN 0-19-925639-X. Critics of British participation in the Iraq war have cited approvingly the example of...

Elizabeth Jane Howard's endless literary circles.(Slipstream: A Memoir)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Slipstream: A Memoir. Elizabeth Jane Howard. Macmillan. 20.00 [pounds sterling]. 493 pages. ISBN 0-333-90349-8. In the course of this absorbing memoir, Elizabeth Jane Howard remarks about a friend: 'Dolly had a passion for collecting people...

Football and the Netherlands under the Nazis.(Ajax, the Dutch, the War: Football in Europe During the Second World War)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Ajax, the Dutch, the War: Football in Europe During the Second World War. Simon Kuper. Orion. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. 244 pages. ISBN 0-75285-149-7. Until the 1960s, the debate on the role of the Dutch in the Second World War centred on...

The tortured genius of Peter Sellers.(Mr Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers)(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... Mr Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers. Ed Sikov. Sidgwick & Jackson. 18.99 [pounds sterling]. 428 pages. ISBN 0-283-07297-0. Peter Sellers is now probably best-remembered for the inspired lunacy of The Goon Show on BBC Radio in the...

From Iceland to Jerusalem - an eleventh century journey.(The Far-Farers: A Journey from Viking Iceland to Crusader Jerusalem)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... The Far-Farers: A Journey from Viking Iceland to Crusader Jerusalem. Victoria Clark. Macmillan. 20.00 [pounds sterling]. 459 pages. ISBN 0-333-90219-X. The old Norse gods, adored in hymns about iron and skull-splittings, rewarded their...

India and the discovery of fingerprints.(Imprint of the Raj)(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... Imprint of the Raj. Chandak Sengoopta. Macmillan. 15.99 [pounds sterling]. 226 pages. ISBN 0-333-98916-3. The book opens dramatically on 13 September 1902, in the Old Bailey with the trial of Harry Jackson for burglary. It was the first...

New and noteworthy.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... In the field of literary studies we have from ROUTLEDGE a new addition to its Literary Sourcebooks' series: A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on the Poems of John Keats (45.00 [pounds sterling]) edited by John Strachan who reminds readers that in...

The world of paperbacks.
September 1, 2003... Happy is the author who, decades after his book has first appeared, discovers that it is to be included in a series of paperback reprints. Happy too is the reader who once again has access to books no longer available but of which he has heard....

Representing the Royal Navy: British Sea Power, 1750-1815.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Margarette Lincoln. Ashgate in association with the National Maritime Museum. 35.00 [pounds sterling]. 226 pages. ISBN 0-7546-0830-1. This new study of the Royal Navy is concerned as much with perception as with reality. The author's aim is to...

The Horse in the Ancient World.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Ann Hyland. Sutton Publishing. 20.00 [pounds sterling]. 210 pages. ISBN 0-7509-22160-9. This is the fourth book by Miss Hyland to trace the history of the horse. Nothing so marks the last two centuries as different from any that preceded them...

London's Underworld: Three Centuries of Vice and Crime.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Fergus Linnane. Robson Books. 16.95 [pounds sterling]. 372 pages. ISBN 1-86105-548-X. This survey of London's organised criminal world begins in the early eighteenth century and continues up to the contemporary West Indian 'crack' gangs. The...

Ahead of the Class.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Marie Stubbs. John Murray. 16.99 [pounds sterling]. 260 pages. ISBN 0-7195-6335-6. The decline of educational standards in the United Kingdom has become a constant topic of discussion and lament among politicians, 'educationalists' and...

English Travel Narratives in the Eighteenth Century.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Jean Vivies. Claire Davison, translator. Ashgate. 37.50 [pounds sterling]. 134 pages. ISBN 0-7546-0448-9. Smollett's and Sterne's 'picaresque' as well as travel books by Dr Johnson and his biographer, Boswell, were all part of a Georgian...

The British Museum Maritime History of Britain and Ireland c. 400-2001.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Ian Friel. The British Museum Press. 25.00 [pounds sterling]. 304 pages. ISBN 0-7141-2718-3. This book is concerned not just with naval history or with seafaring activity but with 'the history of human activities relating to the sea and...

Erich Maria Remarque: The Last Romantic.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Hilton Tims. Constable. 20.00 [pounds sterling]. 240 pages. ISBN 0-09-480290-4. The novel, and subsequent film, All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), made Erich Maria Remarque one of the most celebrated, and wealthiest, authors of his day....

The National Army Museum Book of the Turkish Front 1914-1918: The Campaigns at Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia and in Palestine.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Michael, Lord Carver, F. M. Sidgwick & Jackson. 30.00 [pounds sterling]. 272 pages. ISBN 0-283-07347-0. The fighting in the Ottomon Empire during the Great War was often described by those involved as a 'sideshow' but it was one that involved...

Developments in British Politics 7.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Patrick Dunleavy, Andrew Gamble, Richard Heffernan and Gillian Peele. Palgrave Macmillan. 52.50 [pounds sterling]. 398 pages. ISBN 0-333-98704-7. The 1990s saw a more concentrated period of 'reform' of the constitution than any since the years...

Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Robert Macfarlane. Granta Books. 20.00 [pounds sterling]. 306 pages. ISBN 1-86207-561-1. The fascination which occupies over 300 pages is with mountains, specifically, with mountain climbing, a sport (if it is a sport) that has fascinated a...

Queen Victoria: First Media Monarch.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... John Plunkett. Oxford University Press. 20.00 [pounds sterling]. 256 pages. ISBN 0-19-925392-7. The Monarchy, like the Papacy, has benefited most from the explosion in media coverage. In Britain this began in the nineteenth century with the...

The Dam Busters: Breaking the Great Dams of Western Germany 16-17 May 1943.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Jonathan Falconer. Sutton Publishing. 25.00 [pounds sterling]. 243 pages. ISBN 0-7509-2974-X. Most readers will know something of Bomber Command's attack on the great dams of western Germany through the famous 1955 film, The Dam Busters. This...

Never Give In! The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Winston S. Churchill, editor. Pimlico. 20.00 [pounds sterling]. 524 pages. ISBN 0-7126-6721-0. As John F. Kennedy wrote decades ago, Churchill 'mobilised the English language and sent it into battle'. Even today, after over fifty years of...

The Territorial Management of Ethnic Conflict.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... John Coakley, editor. Frank Cass. 45.00 [pounds sterling]. 330 pages. ISBN 0-7146-8051-6. This is a second, revised and expanded edition of the collection first published ten years ago. The intervening decade has shown that ethnic conflicts...

Difficult Subjects: Working Women and Visual Culture, Britain 1880-1914.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Kristina Huneault. Ashgate. 49.95 [pounds sterling]. 272 pages. ISBN 0-7546-4909-8. Prof Huneault, who teaches in Montreal's Concordia University, examines here the 'possibilities and the difficulties' involved in the visual representation of...

The Mughal Throne: The Saga of India's Great Emperors.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Abraham Eraly. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 20.00 [pounds sterling]. 555 pages. ISBN 1-84212-723-3. This book was first published by Penguin Books in India in 1997 and then, in a revised edition, in 2000. This edition is of the revised version and...

Asian Politics in Development: Essays in Honour of Gordon White.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Robert Benewick, Marc Blecher and Sarah Cook, editors. Frank Cass. 45.00 [pounds sterling]. 315 pages. ISBN 0-7146-5333-0. This collection of fifteen essays on political developments in the Far East is based on a conference at the University of...

Guillotine: The Timbers of Justice.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Robert Frederick Opie. Sutton Publishing. 20.00 [pounds sterling]. 195 pages. ISBN 0-7509-3034-9. One of France's greatest clams to fame is the invention of the guillotine and it quickly became not only an essential part of the horrors of the...