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 SunyLate Stalinism: The aesthetics of politics by Evgeny Dobrenko, translated by Jesse M. SavageThe Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for advice in modern literature, by Beth BlumReading for Life by Philip DavisSubscribe to The TLS at https://www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/ 
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