Review by Rob Spence We don’t celebrate the linguistic diversity of these isles anything like enough. Just think of the rich heritage of Welsh, Gaelic, Irish, Manx, Scots, Cornish, Norn…
Reviewed by Harriet ‘That woman is a hyena in petticoats’ I wonder how many people would have guessed from the title and the cover clip from a portrait who the…
Review by Annabel This is only the second book by TJR that I’ve read, Daisy Jones & the Six being the first. While Daisy is unique in style, being written as documentary…
Review by Peter Reason I am a great fan of Amitav Ghosh both for his fiction and his non-fiction. I was introduced to his writing when The Hungry Tide was…
Review by Liz Dexter Having had the great fortune to have travelled on many exciting railways to many exiting places elsewhere in the world, from the wide-open plains of America…
Translated by Ros Schwartz Review by Annabel Back in 2014, Penguin embarked on republishing all seventy of the Maigret novels in new translations over a period of a few years,…
Reviewed by Helen Parry Of all the arts, ballet casts perhaps the most magical spell. The classics of the repertoire are set in otherworldly realms, with entrancing music and fabulous…
Review by Rob Spence The world of 2026 is a world in turmoil. The relentless 24-hour barrage of news brings daily accounts of war, massacres, invasions, extraordinary political manoeuvres, the…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster David Szalay is preoccupied with masculinity and migration, which were his main themes in All That Man Is and Turbulence, respectively. Flesh combines the two topics…
Reviewed by Harriet Plenty of people will be thinking about Shakespeare at the moment, following the release of the wonderful film Hamnet. It’s taken from the novel of the same…
Review by Annabel Welsh author Emma Glass’s fourth novel, Mrs Jekyll, gained her a second longlisting for the Dylan Thomas Award in 2025. Her debut, Peach, was also longlisted, and…
Review by Annabel I do like an alternative history novel with a contemporary timeline. James Alistair Henry has created a great one in Pagans. It may be a debut novel,…
Review by Liz Dexter That’s just how I am. Hollow and spoiled and unlikeable. That’s how my whole family is. My aunt always says, ‘We didn’t come here for a…
Review by Liz Dexter Christine reckoned she had a solid twenty-five years of matriarch left in her and she’d always use it to direct Declan towards sources of self-esteem. If…
Review by Peter Reason Four people, their lives widely separated by time and geography, set out on journeys away from home, journeys that might well be seen as secular pilgrimages….
Translated by Deborah Dawkin Reviewed by Harriet They were joined from the hip down. But that was all. They breathed, cried, and were lively…. They grew, laughed a lot, and…
Interview by Harriet Lars Mytting is an award-winning Norwegian author. His surprise non-fiction bestseller Norwegian Wood has sold more than 700000 copies worldwide, and his novel The Sixteen Trees of…
Review by Rebecca Foster If, like me, you’ve been following Rachel Joyce’s career ever since her 2012 debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, I have good news to impart:…
Review by Liz Dexter In the world of academia, no one knew my mother could barely write, her handwriting not much better than my paternal grandmother’s stroke-afflicted scrawls, and my…
Review by Rob Spence Ada Leverson should really be better known than she is. Born in 1862, she is probably best remembered now as a devoted friend of Oscar Wilde….
Review by Peter Reason I am a fan of Richard Powers. I read The Overstory four times, appreciating how the writing draws together an animist worldview with ecological activism while…
Review by Annabel Last week it was ten years since David Bowie died in January 2016, and as the hours given to this anniversary in the media bore out, his…
I want to understand why people have subjected themselves to feats of endurance that are so challenging and often gruellingly painful. I want to explore how the values and practices…
Review by Rob Spence The early years of the twentieth century are fascinating for literary historians. The giants of the nineteenth century were gone, and their replacements were, to say…
