Jenny Diski reflects on Adrian Bingham’s “Family Newspapers?: Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918-1978″

Reflecting on Adrian Bingham’s  “Family Newspapers?: Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918-1978″, author Jenny Diski, a contributor to Issue 2 of “The International Literary Quarterly” , writes in “London Review of Books” (October 8th, 2009) that “It was on Good Friday 1930 that listeners who were tuned in to the BBC for the 6.30 evening news bulletin heard ‘There is no news tonight’”. Diski then goes on to quote from the BBC’s “Variety Programmes and Policy Guide for Writers and Producers” which states that “Programmes must at all costs be kept free of crudities” and “When in doubt-cut it out”.

Praise for Rebecca Stott’s latest novel, “The Coral Thief”

Writing in her blog, “Book Group of One” on September 28th, 2009, Carol Wallace is impressed with “The Coral Thief”, the new novel by Rebecca Stott, the novelist and academic, author of the novel “Ghostwalk”, critical works such as “The Fabrication of the Late Victorian Femme Fatale”, and “Darwin and the Barnacle”, a partial biography of Charles Darwin, a Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and a Consulting Editor of “The International Literary Quarterly”. Wallace admires the fact that Stott “brilliantly conjures up the dizzying disorder of a France in flux” and goes on to write that the ”research is impeccable without being showy” and that “the prose is lean and the pacing tight”.

Ritchie Robertson publishes review in “European History Quarterly”

A review of “The Great Tradition and its Legacy: The Evolution of Dramatic and Musical Theater in Austria and Central Europe” (edited by Michael Cherlin, Halina Filipowicz and Richard L. Randolph), written by Ritchie Robertson, Professor of German at Oxford University, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a Consulting Editor of “The International Literary Quarterly”, has been published in “European History Quarterly”, Volume 39, no 4 (October, 2009).

Aamer Hussein heading to Istanbul on August 11th for book-launch

Aamer Hussein, currently Director of the MA programme in National and International Literature at the School of Advanced Study’s Institute of English Studies (Senate House), a contributor to Issue 2 of Interlitq, whose publications include “This Other Salt”,  “Turquoise”, ” “Insomnia” and “Another Gulmohar Tree”,  and who will be contributing a new story, “The Grammar of Grief”, to Issue 8 of the review, is heading to Istanbul on Tuesday, August 11th. Hussein is heading to that city, which he describes as “clinched at Asia’s furthermost coast but extremely cosmopolitan”, to play his part in launching “Doğulu Yazarlar Gözüyle İstanbul” (“İstanbul in the Eyes of Eastern Writers”), consisting mostly of essays, in both Turkish and English, published by the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s cultural enterprise Kültür A.Ş. This new publication, published in March 2009, is a follow-up to Kültür A.Ş.’s two previous books that featured essays on İstanbul by foreign writers, “Batılı Gezginlerin Gözüyle İstanbul” (“Istanbul in the Eyes of Western Travelers”, 2006) and “Yabancı Gazetecilerin Gözüyle İstanbul” (“Istanbul with the Perspectives of Correspondents”, 2007). The book, edited by Doğan Ertuğrul, consists of contributions by 13 prominent men of letters, including English-Sudanese author Jamal Mahjoub, Syrian poet and essayist Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, better known by his pen name Adonis, and Saudi poet Abir Zaki. Murat Düzyol’s photographs of İstanbul accompany the articles.

Jenny Diski’s “The Sixties” reviewed in “The Daily Telegraph”

Writing in “The Daily Telegraph” on June 28th, 2009, Andrew Lycett reviews “The Sixties”, the new book by author Jenny Diski, a contributor to Issue 2 of “The International Literary Quarterly” . Observing that Diski, in her personal account of that decade, is “excellent on that sense of wilful rebellion”, and that “her forte is teasing out the long-term significance of her odyssey”, Lycett concludes: “her mixture of hard-won experience and intelligent reflection sets her study well beond the clichés”.