April 29, 2021 The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox Reviewed by Max Dunbar In Lords and Ladies, his Faerie novel, Terry Pratchett quotes an old folk rhyme: My mother said I never shouldPlay…
April 29, 2021 Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera Reviewed by Liz Dexter “If we don’t confront the reality of what happened in British empire, we will never be able to work out…
April 27, 2021 A Rage in Harlem and The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes Reviewed by Annabel I first discovered the mad world of Chester Himes’s Harlem in an old Allison & Busby paperback of The Crazy Kill,…
April 27, 2021 Whitman in Washington by Kenneth Price Reviewed by Rob Spence Kenneth Price is the co-director of the Walt Whitman Archive, and one of the leading experts on the poet, having…
April 27, 2021 A Theatre For Dreamers by Polly Samson Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Tired of lockdown, hankering to see new places, and in desperate need of some sun: that describes most of us…
April 22, 2021 A Virtual Image by Rosalind Brackenbury Reviewed by Helen Parry Until Michael Walmer reissued her first novel, A Day to Remember to Forget, I had never heard of Rosalind Brackenbury….
April 22, 2021 There’s No Story There – Wartime Writing, 1944-1945 by Inez Holden Reviewed by Hayley Anderton This is one of two recent releases from Handheld Press that cover aspects of wartime experience – in this case…
April 20, 2021 The Immortals of Tehran by Ali Araghi Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Who hasn’t thought of poets as semi-mythical, Byron-like figures, with access to otherworldly visions? The truth is, most of the…
April 20, 2021 Diary of a Film by Niven Govinden Reviewed by Annabel Diary of a Film follows a few days in the life of an auteur film director who is in Italy with…
April 20, 2021 Commemorative Modernisms by Alice Kelly Review by Rob Spence Modernism has always resisted precise definition, and in recent years it has been normal in literary-critical circles to use the…
April 15, 2021 Circles and Squares: The Lives and Loves of the Hampstead Modernists by Caroline Maclean Review by Karen Langley The early part of the 20th century was a period when modern art was flourishing. New ways of living were…
April 15, 2021 Love Lives by Carol Dyhouse Reviewed by Harriet It’s probably a common experience among people who read a lot that sometimes two books will overlap in unexpected ways. This…
April 13, 2021 Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker Reviewed by Lory Widmer-Hess Schizophrenic. The very word is a trigger for aversion, a signal to run away, with its spiky, spluttered consonants and…
April 13, 2021 King of Rabbits by Karla Neblett Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Imagine a teenager who skips school, smokes, drinks and disappears from his girlfriend on a regular basis; a young man…
April 8, 2021 Heavy Light: A Journey through Madness, Mania and Healing by Horatio Clare Reviewed by Peter Reason It was on a family skiing holiday that Horatio Clare finally went mad. This was the culmination of a period…
April 8, 2021 A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel Reviewed by Max Dunbar The Age of Acceleration In 2019, the Unherd website carried an article by Gerard DeGroot, about the Chang’e 4 moon landing….
April 6, 2021 Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry by Margaret Kennedy Reviewed by Harriet If you’ve heard of, or read, Margaret Kennedy at all, it’s likely to be her 1924 novel The Constant Nymph. Written…
April 6, 2021 Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce Reviewed by Heavenali Miss Benson’s Beetle is Rachel Joyce’s latest novel – now published in paperback. Women are at the heart of this wonderful…
April 1, 2021 Hyphens & Hashtags* by Claire Cock-Starkey Reviewed by Liz Dexter Subtitled “The stories behind the symbols on our keyboards” (the subtitle linked to the main title via an asterisk rather…
April 1, 2021 The Stone Age by Jen Hadfield Reviewed by Hayley Anderton It’s seven years since Jen Hadfield’s last collection, Byssus, came out. This was the point when I really became aware…
