Review by Elaine Simpson-Long When Alexander Larman wrote The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication about Edward VIII, he had no idea that it would be the beginning of…
Reviewed by Harriet In the back of my mind I was always sure that wonderful things were waiting for me, but I’d got to get through a lot of horrors…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas The world is probably divided into two people: those who find the idea of a book about flat landscapes appealing and those who don’t. I suspect…
Review by Rob Spence If you attended a British secondary school at any time from the late nineteen sixties until the present day, at some point you will have encountered…
Review by Liz Dexter My hope is that this biography will send readers back to Jan Morris’s books, to either reread them of, for those who have yet to discover…
Review by Karen Langley The coming of the Internet and the development of blogging at the turn of the 21st century led to a resurgence of the personal essay, which…
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long If I had my way every single teacher in the land who is attempting to teach Shakespeare should have a copy of this to hand as,…
Review by Annabel I’ve very much enjoyed reading Nicholas Royle’s books, the novel An English Guide to Birdwatching (reviewed here, with a Q&A with Nicholas here), and then his memoir…
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long The author of this book, Jane Marguerite Tippett, came across a previously unknown cache of letters, memoranda and notes written by the Duke of Windsor when she…
Review by Annabel I’ve long followed Catherine Taylor on Twitter, where she has a straight-talking view of things literary and often political. A former publisher, she’s now a freelance writer,…
Review by Rob Spence Unless you are Tristram Shandy, you probably don’t know when and where you were conceived. If you are Harriet Devine, on the other hand, you know…
Review by Peter Reason On the first page of Landscapes of Silence is a list of the many words for snow in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit hunters and…
Review by Julie Barham A further book recording life in all its humour and honesty, this is a brilliant read which captures so much from the perspective of Shaun Bythell,…
Reviewed by Harriet One of the problems with bounding spontaneously through life, I’ve discovered, is that people do tend to react to me quite strongly. I’d like to say that…
Review by Karen Langley M. John Harrison is a writer who’s been pushing the boundaries of fiction for decades; from his early sci fi works, through the fantasies (or are…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton This is a book I’ve been anticipating for a couple of years. I think I first heard about it via Stephen Rutt, a nature writer I…
Reviewed by Helen Parry Not every writer lives a particularly interesting life (it is, after all, for their sitting down and imagining things that we value them) and not every…
Review by Annabel North by Northwest isn’t about what happens to Cary Grant, it’s about what happens to his suit. The suit has the adventures, a gorgeous New York suit…
Translated by Helen Weaver and Leo Raditsa Reviewed by Rob Spence If you were asked to suggest which real-life character was to be played by Woody Harrelson in his next…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster When I first heard about journalist Polly Morland’s A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story, which was later shortlisted for the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize, I…
Review by Terence Jagger We all know John Donne, poet and preacher, though many don’t realise that; indeed, some apparently don’t realise that they are the same man! But yes,…
Reviewed by Harriet True crime is normally not a genre that attracts me in the least, so why am I reviewing this book? Well, because it tells a fascinating, moving,…
Reviewed by Annabel Sadly, I missed seeing Alan Rickman in Les Liaisons Dangereuses by a few weeks; Greg Hicks had recently taken over the role of the Vicomte de Valmont…
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long Bridget Keenan worked as an editor on Nova magazine, and on the newspapers The Observer and The Sunday Times. I remember reading her pieces and thinking that…
