Summary: This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Toby Lichtig are joined by Stephen Lovell, Professor of Modern History at King’s College London, to discuss two important biographies of Joseph Stalin, covering the opposite ends of the dictator’s life; the debate around the official Home Office history of Britain, a document full of omissions and riddled with errors, rolls on; and can a book make you a better person? Can even the high modernists be mined for lessons in life? Joanna Scutts considers the relationship between 'serious' literature and self-help. Stalin: Passage to revolution by Ronald Grigor Suny Late Stalinism: The aesthetics of politics by Evgeny Dobrenko, translated by Jesse M. Savage The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for advice in modern literature, by Beth Blum Reading for Life by Philip Davis Subscribe to The TLS at https://www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/ <br><hr><p style="color: grey;">See <a style="color: grey;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://acast.com/privacy">acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.</p>
