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 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 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…
March 23, 2021 Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries 1918-1938, edited by Simon Heffer Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long When I was a little girl I kept a diary. It was pink and fluffy with a lock and a…
March 18, 2021 Keats by Lucasta Miller Reviewed by Harriet It may not have escaped your attention that 2021 is the 200th anniversary of the death of John Keats. Yes, on…
March 9, 2021 Cary Grant, the Making of a Hollywood Legend by Mark Glancy Review by Elaine Simpson-Long There is a scene in Charade, a 1964 film which Cary Grant made with Audrey Hepburn, in which the following…
March 4, 2021 The Panic Years by Nell Frizzell Reviewed by Harriet ‘Every millennial woman should have this on her bookshelf’ says Pandora Sykes on the front of Nell Frizzell’s new book. New…
March 4, 2021 She Come By It Natural by Sarah Smarsh Reviewed by Basil Ransome Davies Forty years ago I spent some time on the motel strip at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to do some hiking…
February 25, 2021 Thin Places by Kerri ní Dochartaigh Review by Peter Reason I have been totally absorbed in Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Thin Places since it arrived in the morning mail and I…
February 23, 2021 Chauvo-Feminism: On Sex, Power and #MeToo by Sam Mills Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Remember the 1990s? It was a decade where lads’ mags decorated magazine shelves in supermarkets and where Men Are from…
February 9, 2021 This Time Next Year We’ll be Laughing by Jacqueline Winspear Reviewed by Harriet Jacqueline Winspear was born in 1955. Her debut novel – the first of her award-winning Maisie Dobbs mysteries – was published…
December 16, 2020 I Don’t Want to Go to the Taj Mahal: Stories of a Birmingham Boy by Charlie Hill Review by Eleanor Updegraff It can be difficult to get other people interested in your life. Many authors have tried, many have failed –…
December 10, 2020 The Fragments of My Father by Sam Mills Reviewed by Harriet Sam Mills’ ‘memoir of madness, love, and being a carer’ starts on a Friday night in early 2016. Sam’s father has been…
December 9, 2020 Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel, by Rachel Holmes Reviewed by Rob Spence I recently watched the Ethiopia episode of Afua Hirsch’s excellent series African Renaissance, in which I was startled to see…
November 12, 2020 Michael Tippett, The Biography by Oliver Soden Reviewed by Peter Hobson This is a very long, extensively referenced account of the life and music of Michael Tippett, a composer who is…
September 21, 2020 Journey through a Tragicomic Century: The Absurd Life of Hasso Grabner by Francis Nenik Translated by Katy Derbyshire Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff This September sees the launch of V&Q Books, a brand-new publishing imprint with the mission of…
September 17, 2020 Horse Crazy: The Story of a Woman and a World in Love with an Animal by Sarah Maslin Nir Review by Liz Dexter Sarah Maslin Nir is a staff reporter for the New York Times who, by her own admission, has sought out…
August 4, 2020 Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Natasha Trethewey is an English professor and former U.S. Poet Laureate familiar to me from Native Guard (2006), her third…
July 30, 2020 Grayson Perry by Jacky Klein & Grayson Perry Reviewed by Liz Dexter This sumptuous book, that has a lot of content, in terms of both text and image, is a real treat…
July 28, 2020 Three Wainwright Prize Nominees: Books by Patrick Barkham, Patrick Laurie & Jini Reddy Reviewed by Rebecca Foster The Wainwright Prize longlists for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes were announced in early June and will…
July 2, 2020 Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty Reviewed by Rebecca Foster When the Wainwright Prize longlists (for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes) were announced in early June, Dara…
June 23, 2020 I Remember by Georges Perec Introduced, Translated, Annotated, Edited and Indexed by Philip Terry and David Bellos Reviewed by Karen Langley Regular readers of Shiny New Books may recall…
June 16, 2020 James and Nora: A Portrait of a Marriage by Edna O’Brien Review by Rob Spence Last year, Weidenfeld and Nicholson reissued Edna O’Brien’s 1999 biography of Joyce, an entertainingly idiosyncratic volume, which is reviewed here….
May 21, 2020 Well-kept Secrets: The Story of William Wordsworth by Andrew Wordsworth Reviewed by Harriet As I’m sure you’ve noticed, this year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wordsworth, one of England’s most celebrated…
May 19, 2020 Diary Of A Foreigner In Paris, by Curzio Malaparte Translated by Stephen Twilley Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies An adjective frequently applied to Curzio Malaparte is ‘colourful’. To the Cambridge dictionary it means ‘vivid,…
