Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley
Reviewed by Harriet If you’re a watcher of historical TV documentaries, you won’t need introducing to Lucy Worsley, who presents history programmes for the BBC, in which she often dresses…
No Cunning Plan: My Story by Tony Robinson
Review by Laura Marriott Like many people I first came to know Tony Robinson through his role as Baldrick on Blackadder, before following him as he helmed Time Team. This…
Deaths of the Poets by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts
Review by Harriet The deaths of poets matter to us because they become a lens through which to look at the poems. So say the authors, both poets themselves, in…
Aphra Behn: A Secret Life by Janet Todd
Review by Harriet ‘Aphra Behn was a woman who wore masks’. So says Janet Todd at the beginning of this monumental, newly revised biography of Behn, who was a prolific…
The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington by Joanna Moorhead
Reviewed by Karen Langley This year is the centenary of the birth of author and artist Leonora Carrington, and we’re being treated to a wonderful array of issues and reissues…
David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet by Thomas Dilworth
Review by Rob Spence Ask a reasonably well-educated person to name some Anglophone modernist poets, and you are sure to hear the names of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Mention…
A House in Flanders, by Michael Jenkins
Reviewed by Helen Parry In the extreme northern part of France lies the plain of Flanders, a great fertile expanse rolling inland from the sea until it meets a chain…
Gone: A Girl, a Violin, and a Life Unstrung by Min Kym
Reviewed by Harriet For some reason I’ve always been fascinated by child prodigies – people who seem to have been born with an innate talent for something, which very often…
Molly Keane A Life by Sally Phipps
Review by Hayley Anderton From the moment I discovered Molly Keane it was love, not just for the quality of her writing, the unflattering but compelling sharpness of her observations,…
William and Dorothy Wordsworth: All in Each Other by Lucy Newlyn
Reviewed by Harriet She who dwells with me, with whom I’ve livedWith such communion, that no place on earthCan ever seem a solitude to me. So wrote William Wordsworth in…
The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carré
Reviewed by Rob Spence The very name seems mysterious: perhaps a whiff of the matinée idol about it, speaking of a glamorous and wealthy background. And although, like many a…
Ada’s Algorithm by James Essinger
Review by Peter Hobson One of the most accomplished women of the nineteenth century and little known until recently outside mathematical and computer science circles, Ada Lovelace is the subject…
The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry
Reviewed by Liz Dexter This book, based loosely on work Perry has done in the media and on television, looks at modern masculinity and how it can possibly be reworked…
Diary of the Dark Years 1940 – 1944 by Jean Guéhenno
Translated and annotated by David Ball Review by Terence Jagger This is a sombre book, the diary of a thoughtful but determined man – a teacher and writer who, 50…
Sword of Bone by Anthony Rhodes
Reviewed by Simon They’ve done it again! Slightly Foxed have brought out yet another fascinating, entertaining, and well-written memoir – and another one that I would never have heard of…
Brensham Village by John Moore
Reviewed by Simon Brensham Village, the latest volume from the Slightly Foxed Editions series that I love so dearly, is a sort of sequel to Portrait of Elmbury, also published by…
Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited by Philip Eade
Reviewed by Liz Dexter When approaching a biography of Evelyn Waugh, one can’t help but assume it’s going to be a portrait of quite a nasty man who was mean…
Charmed Life: The Phenomenal World of Philip Sassoon by Damian Collins
Reviewed by Liz Dexter First of all, because this is the question everyone will ask: yes, Philip Sassoon was a distant cousin of the First World War poet, Siegfried –…
Negroland by Margo Jefferson
Reviewed by Victoria ‘I think it’s too easy to recount unhappy memories when you write about race,’ writes Margot Jefferson, as a refrain repeated several times across the course of…
More Was Lost by Eleanor Perényi
Reviewed by Simon If you’re anything like me, you might be unfamiliar with the political dynamics of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the years leading up to the Second World War….
Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey by Frances Wilson
Reviewed by Harriet The sense of space, and in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c. were exhibited in proportions so vast as the…
Shop Girl by Mary Portas
Review by Annabel Mary Portas is one of those TV presenter/gurus you either love or find profoundly irritating. I love her and her championing of the high street and independent…
Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny by Holly Madison
Reviewed by Laura Marriott “I always thought it would be classy to not kiss and tell … but after a while you just get sick of having other people trying…
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi
Translated by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson and Irina Steinberg Reviewed by Karen Langley The Russian Revolution and ensuing Civil War were amongst the most brutal conflicts of…