May 26, 2022 The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes our Lives by Jude Rogers Review by Liz Dexter What role does music really, deeply play in our lives, from our first days to our last? Jude Rogers in…
May 26, 2022 Elektra by Jennifer Saint Review by Annabel The current vogue for feminist retellings of stories from Greek and Roman myths and legends is showing no signs of slowing…
May 24, 2022 Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin Reviewed by Harriet ‘What if you didn’t have to live with your worst memories?’, asks the cover of this debut novel. Anyone who’s seen…
May 24, 2022 The Palace Papers by Tina Brown Review by Elaine Simpson-Long I recently reviewed a biography of the Queen by Robert Hardman (reviewed here) which I described as an “admirable book”…
May 19, 2022 Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson Reviewed by Harriet It’s the first of September 1939. Hitler has invaded Poland, and though Britain is not yet at war with Germany, there…
May 19, 2022 America Over the Water by Shirley Collins Review by Annabel Shirley Collins is widely regarded as one of the most influential British folk singers of our times. Often singing alongside her…
May 17, 2022 Traitor in the Ice by K.J. Maitland Review by Julie Barham This book is a powerful, sometimes brutal historical novel set in the winter of 1607, when life seemed frozen by…
May 17, 2022 Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor Review by David Hebblethwaite If Jon McGregor’s name is on the front of a book, I want to read it – it’s as simple…
May 12, 2022 Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month: Birth Notes by Jessica Cornwell & After the Storm by Emma Jane Unsworth Reviewed by Rebecca Foster May is Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month and so the perfect time to consider two memoirs of postnatal depression, one…
May 12, 2022 Garden Physic by Sylvia Legris Review by Anna Hollingsworth Imagine all the life crawling in the undergrowth of a garden. In Garden Physic, Sylvia Legris digs it all up…
May 10, 2022 Homelands: The History of a Friendship by Chitra Ramaswamy Review by David Hebblethwaite In 2011, journalist Chitra Ramaswamy was sent to interview Henry and Ingrid Wuga, a Jewish couple who had fled Nazi…
May 5, 2022 Even the Darkest Night, by Javier Cercas Translated by Anne Mclean Review by Michael Eaude Javier Cercas rose to literary fame two decades ago with Soldiers of Salamis (2001), a novel…
May 3, 2022 Ephemeron by Fiona Benson Review by Anna Hollingsworth On the cover of Fiona Benson’s Ephemeron, there is a butterfly trapped in a spider’s web. It’s a melancholy image,…
May 3, 2022 These Days by Lucy Caldwell Reviewed by Harriet ‘two sisters, four nights, one city’ is the subtitle of this riveting new novel by Lucy Caldwell. I don’t think I’ve…
