RITA DI SANTO contemplates two films about journalism that opened this year’s festival
The incubator of popular nationalism
MARTIN HALL relishes a meticulous, groundbreaking and erudite history of Serbia 1804-1941
MURDER FORETOLD: Alleged Serbian partisans are being summarily executed by hanging in Krusevac with Austrian soldiers posing for the photographer on September 15 1914
[Public Domain]
GEOFF BOTTOMS applauds a world-class production King Lear that pits late feudalism against a rising bourgeoisie
MARY CONWAY keeps up with the sheer pace of a drama about the terrible gap between sanitised reporting and real-life turmoil of race and gender
New releases from Brian Fallon, Antony Szmierek and Hollow Hand
APURBA CHATTERJEE explains how British artists in India used the “picturesque” to reshape colonial landscapes and celebrate imperial power
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes a revival of Reginald Rose’s classic play that reminds us of the fundamental need for trials with juries
Serbia: A Modern History
Marko Attila Hoare
Hurst, £65
THERE are certain cliches that are wise to avoid when reviewing a book, but then along comes a work that tempts you down that well-trodden path. The cliche in question is “exhaustive,” an epithet which Marko Hoare’s meticulous, groundbreaking and erudite Serbia: A Modern History thoroughly deserves.
An exhaustive book would normally demand an exhaustive review, but there is so much to say about the work that general remarks allied to a concentration on a couple of well-known periods might serve the reader better.
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