Review by Karen Langley The early part of the 20th century was a period when modern art was flourishing. New ways of living were being explored, abstract art forms were…
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 imprisoned vowels, four foreign syllables meaning…
Reviewed by Peter Reason It was on a family skiing holiday that Horatio Clare finally went mad. This was the culmination of a period of high activity and stress, coupled…
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 key, easily broken if anybody had…
Reviewed by Harriet It may not have escaped your attention that 2021 is the 200th anniversary of the death of John Keats. Yes, on 23 February 1821, the 25-year-old poet…
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 exchange takes place: Reggie Lambert (Hepburn)…
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 in the sense that it’s just…
Reviewed by Basil Ransome Davies Forty years ago I spent some time on the motel strip at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to do some hiking in the magnificent Smoky Mountains. At…
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 read in the Preface: ‘The right…
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Remember the 1990s? It was a decade where lads’ mags decorated magazine shelves in supermarkets and where Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus with…
Reviewed by Harriet Jacqueline Winspear was born in 1955. Her debut novel – the first of her award-winning Maisie Dobbs mysteries – was published in 2003. Counting on my fingers…
Review by Eleanor Updegraff It can be difficult to get other people interested in your life. Many authors have tried, many have failed – often simply by taking themselves too…
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 locked in a bathroom for two…
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 an interview with Sylvia Pankhurst’s daughter-in-law,…
Reviewed by Peter Hobson This is a very long, extensively referenced account of the life and music of Michael Tippett, a composer who is often regarded as someone who never…
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 translating ‘remarkable writing from Germany’ for…
Review by Liz Dexter Sarah Maslin Nir is a staff reporter for the New York Times who, by her own admission, has sought out horses wherever she’s travelled to write…
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 of five poetry collections – an…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter This sumptuous book, that has a lot of content, in terms of both text and image, is a real treat – the only book so far…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster The Wainwright Prize longlists for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes were announced in early June and will be whittled down to shortlists on…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster When the Wainwright Prize longlists (for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes) were announced in early June, Dara McAnulty broke two records as the…
Introduced, Translated, Annotated, Edited and Indexed by Philip Terry and David Bellos Reviewed by Karen Langley Regular readers of Shiny New Books may recall the Bookbuzz piece earlier this year…
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. Now, the same publishers have revived…
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 poets, much loved by many (apart,…
