Uploaded March 2019 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Your correspondent is frequently asked how and where his books are chosen. And thereby hangs a tale, involving, as it does, a motley crew of lesser entities, rising to a single, dominant source.
The Literary Review was founded in 1979 by an Edinburgh academic. Directed at a tiny audience of similarly sophisticated readers hungry for intelligent book reviews in the face of ever declining newspaper coverage, it went through a succession of worthy editors until an improbable encounter between its subsequent owner, a sophisticated Palestinian emigre, named Naim Attallah, whose day job was that of Managing Director of Asprey's, a Bond Street landmark, and Evelyn Waugh's son, Auberon, as a result of which the magazine became a landmark itself.
The two men became fast friends; subscriptions doubled and doubled again; and for the last 15 years of his life, after a much respected career as both author and journalist, Auberon Waugh became an editor himself. He succeeded brilliantly. On his humorous, benevolent and indulgent watch, his magazine became a monthly treat, not merely for the quality of its reviews, but for the quality of the reviewers themselves. Peer reviewing peer, expert reviewing expert, most endowed with a very British sense of humour, has become the hallmark of an increasingly respected paper, whose present editor, Nancy Sladek, more than lives up to her illustrious predecessors.
It is this remarkable organ that spawns so many of our own vignettes, and deservedly so. British-based, but cosmopolitan to the core, it appeals to an international base of loyal readers, whose affection for it is as reliable as the excellent books it selects.
More videos on literature at
bookreviewsandvideos.com/category/literature
Your correspondent is frequently asked how and where his books are chosen. And thereby hangs a tale, involving, as it does, a motley crew of lesser entities, rising to a single, dominant source.
The Literary Review was founded in 1979 by an Edinburgh academic. Directed at a tiny audience of similarly sophisticated readers hungry for intelligent book reviews in the face of ever declining newspaper coverage, it went through a succession of worthy editors until an improbable encounter between its subsequent owner, a sophisticated Palestinian emigre, named Naim Attallah, whose day job was that of Managing Director of Asprey's, a Bond Street landmark, and Evelyn Waugh's son, Auberon, as a result of which the magazine became a landmark itself.
The two men became fast friends; subscriptions doubled and doubled again; and for the last 15 years of his life, after a much respected career as both author and journalist, Auberon Waugh became an editor himself. He succeeded brilliantly. On his humorous, benevolent and indulgent watch, his magazine became a monthly treat, not merely for the quality of its reviews, but for the quality of the reviewers themselves. Peer reviewing peer, expert reviewing expert, most endowed with a very British sense of humour, has become the hallmark of an increasingly respected paper, whose present editor, Nancy Sladek, more than lives up to her illustrious predecessors.
It is this remarkable organ that spawns so many of our own vignettes, and deservedly so. British-based, but cosmopolitan to the core, it appeals to an international base of loyal readers, whose affection for it is as reliable as the excellent books it selects.
More videos on literature at
bookreviewsandvideos.com/category/literature
