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Providence Lost by Paul Lay review – the rise and fall of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate [01 Jan 2020|07:30am]
A compelling and wry narrative of one of the most intellectually thrilling eras of British history

The only public execution of a British head of state occurred 371 years ago outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall on 30 January 1649. It was a radical, unintended act, born of failed negotiations and it entirely disregarded the people of Scotland and Ireland. The surviving details are piquant and shaming: Charles I in two shirts so as not to betray shivered fear on a cold day, a masked executioner in a wig and false beard, a collective groan from the crowd.

This used to be the moment when the curtain dropped. After an interval, or interregnum, in which Oliver Cromwell assumed power and killed all joy, the Stuarts returned for the second act, Charles II: the merry monarch. His reign was backdated to his father’s death and an Act of Oblivion drew a line under the horrid business of republic and civil war. As Paul Lay demonstrates in his immensely stimulating study of Cromwell’s Protectorate, this simply will not do. This was one of the most extraordinary, exhilarating, innovative and anxiety inducing periods in British history. There is no better time to be looking at it.

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'I'm on the hunt for humour and hope': what will authors be reading in 2020? [01 Jan 2020|10:00am]

Writers including Matt Haig, Gina Miller and Cressida Cowell give their new year’s reading resolutions

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Top 10 books about new beginnings [01 Jan 2020|10:00am]

From Virginia Woolf to Lorrie Moore and Diana Wynne Jones, fresh starts provide an endless source of inspiration for fiction

The other night I dreamed it was my last day of high school. I was gathering schoolbooks when something caught my eye: lettuce leaves, lying on the carpet. Perfect! I thought, scooping them up and packing them. Now I won’t be hungry at university next year! I woke still glowing with pride.

Since that dream, I’ve been thinking about how neatly education arranges life into endings and beginnings. You finish one segment, take a summer holiday, and step into the next – nervous, excited – and equipped, if you have my sort of foresight, with a handful of rotting lettuce leaves. But grownup life is more chaotic. There are plenty of potential beginnings – jobs, partners, dietary changes, but nobody has drawn up a schedule. Changes tend to be flung at you, or depend on your own efforts.

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Diary of a Murderer by Kim Young-ha review – dark stories from South Korea [01 Jan 2020|12:00pm]
A serial killer’s amnesia; an assassin’s success; a boy’s bond with his kidnapper … dark and funny tales reflect a changing political climate

Given that loss of memory has become a familiar device in fiction, and the psychopath such a popular character archetype, we shouldn’t be too surprised by the notion of a serial killer hero with Alzheimer’s. The title story of South Korean author Kim Young-ha’s collection is a first-person narrative with a journal structure that nods to Gogol’s Diary of a Madman, and like its Russian progenitor charts the descent into dementia of an alienated protagonist.

Septuagenarian Kim Byeongsu has long retired from murder, but when a rival practitioner appears in his neighbourhood, and his adopted daughter Eunhui risks becoming a victim, he decides to use his old skills to terminate with extreme prejudice a threat he himself once posed. But he’s beginning to forget, and to lose any faculty for this harsh act of redemption.

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TS Eliot’s intimate letters to confidante unveiled after 60 years [01 Jan 2020|03:10pm]

Collection of 1,131 letters may shed light on poet’s relationship with Emily Hale

A collection of more than 1,000 letters from the Nobel laureate TS Eliot to his confidante and muse Emily Hale is unveiled this week, after having been kept in sealed boxes at a US university library for 60 years.

The cache promises to offer an intimate insight into the poet’s life and work, and on the extent of his relationship with Hale, a source of speculation for decades.

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