ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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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
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
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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