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….
September 18, 2018 On Rape by Germaine Greer Review by Anna Hollingsworth To say that the statistics are grim is a blatant understatement. One woman in five will experience sexual violence, but…
February 8, 2018 The Lion and the Unicorn by George Orwell Review by Karen Langley Although George Orwell’s name resonates most strongly with us nowadays because of his great novels – in particular “Nineteen Eighty…
February 1, 2018 The Russian Soul: Selections from A Writer’s Diary by Fyodor Dostoevsky Introduced by Rosamund Bartlett Translated by Kenneth Lantz / Olga Shartse Reviewed by Karen Langley Notting Hill Editions will probably need no introduction to…
October 6, 2016 Rasputin and Other Ironies by Teffi Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson and Rose France Reviewed by Karen Langley One of my highlights from 2014 was the…
June 28, 2016 The Abundance by Annie Dillard Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Annie Dillard is one of those uncategorisable writers who poke fingers into all sorts of genres. Like Adam Gopnik, Rebecca…
December 10, 2015 Beautiful and Impossible Things by Oscar Wilde Reviewed by Karen Langley There’s always the danger that when an author becomes more famous than his works, those works will become so eclipsed…
July 9, 2015 Cyclogeography by Jon Day Reviewed by Victoria The term ‘psychogeography’ may sound unwieldy but it’s actually rather an intriguing and lovely notion. It ties together the ideas that…
January 27, 2015 A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf Reviewed by Simon There are plenty of copies of Virginia Woolf’s famous feminist essay A Room of One’s Own available, new and second hand, but I…
January 20, 2015 Essays on the Self by Virginia Woolf Reviewed by Simon I should hang my colours to the mast from the outset: for my money, Virginia Woolf is the greatest writer of…
October 20, 2014 Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcom Review by Victoria Best I’ve been a huge fan of Janet Malcolm since reading her brilliant biography of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, The Silent…
