FROM THE MAGAZINE

November 2023

Books

America’s professor: the afterlife of C.S. Lewis

He is the myth-maker, the scholar, the convert, the defender of the faith, the rebel, the writer and the teacher

By David J. Davis

From the Magazine

Book Review

Adam Sisman’s new John le Carré biography entertains and disappoints

While I expected the le Carré who emerges from it to be a womanizer, a fantasist and a self-server, I didn’t anticipate that he would be such a terrible bore

By D.J. Taylor

From the Magazine

Book Review

How the CIA interfered in the Congo

Stuart Reid relates the whole convoluted tale lucidly, conveying the steadily growing atmosphere of confusion and fear

By Christopher Sandford

From the Magazine

Book Review

The gap between technotopia and dystopia are never far apart

Mustafa Suleyman’s new book is a rousing call-to-arms for humanity

By Mark Piesing

From the Magazine

Book Review

Two excellent books that offer new insight into The Iliad

A new translation and critical study explore the legendary poem’s numinous spell

By Philip Womack

From the Magazine

Music

The great Marty Stuart, possessor of one of popular music’s legendary guitars

He stands five-foot-seven in his stocking feet, but with Clarence White’s Telecaster slung around his neck, he looks ten feet tall

By Aaron Gwyn

From the Magazine

Music

Age is catching up with our much-beloved musicians

In our increasingly secular age, we worship rock stars as our deities, as figures who inspire our hopes and dreams and fantasies of excess

By Alexander Larman

From the Magazine

Music

George Harrison at eighty

Of the four Beatles, Harrison was the most attuned to, and wary of, the mania side of Beatlemania

By Robert Dean Lurie

From the Magazine

Film

John Waters, the pope of cliché

Cinema’s pet subversive deserves a proper reappraisal

By Mitchell Jackson

From the Magazine

Exhibitions

Understanding museum theft with best-selling author Kirk Wallace Johnson

There is, inevitably, a feeling of embarrassment and shame that emanates from institutions after they have been robbed

By William Newton

From the Magazine