A Ride Across America by Simon Parker
Review by Liz Dexter Fascinatingly, many of the small towns I found along the way seemed to be stuck in a time warp. I cycled past rusted 1940s Studebakers and…
Review by Liz Dexter Fascinatingly, many of the small towns I found along the way seemed to be stuck in a time warp. I cycled past rusted 1940s Studebakers and…
Review by Karen Langley When most people think of the high profile spies of the 20th century, names like Burgess, McLean and of course Kim Philby are probably the first…
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long Queen Elizabeth II had fifteen prime ministers during her reign. Queen Victoria had fourteen. The weekly meetings between Queen Elizabeth and her prime minister were one…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter I would like to say to the non-African reader of this book that I hope I have demonstrated that Africa has a history, that it is…
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…
Review by Rob Spence When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced in October last year that the multi-billion pound rail infrastructure programme HS2 would not, after all, be completed, leaving Manchester…
Review by Peter Reason The term ‘narco state’ usually refers to those countries whose economy has been taken over by the cultivation of the opium poppy and the criminal gangs…
The Futures Series from indie publisher Melville House UK recently launched with four titles that couldn’t be more different from each other: going from Songwriting, to Trust, to War Crimes…
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long There is a plethora of journalists who are labelled Royal Experts and I sometimes wonder how you reach these giddy heights, if that is how you…
Review by Lix Dexter This is a book about the relationship between how we speak and who we are. More precisely, it’s a book about the role of spoken language,…
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 Liz Dexter This book is written for anyone who is wondering why, in spite of decades of effort to promote change, the numbers of women pursuing careers in…
Reviewed by Gill Davies I was intrigued by the title of this book, which didn’t announce itself as a traditional industrial history, and by its format – it looks rather…
Reviewed by Harriet Nowadays, when most people hear the term street food, they will be thinking about the emergence in the past ten or so years of a wonderful range…
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 Rob Spence If you were tired of aimless flânerie in the Paris of the twenties, and fancied seeing Josephine Baker dancing at the Folies Bergère, you might be…
Review by Annabel Some years ago, our Shiny editor-at-large, Simon, reviewed a book by Ben Highmore called The Great Indoors. That book explored typical homes over the last century or so…
Review by Liz Dexter There are by now over 700 Very Short Introductions, on the Book of Common Prayer, the Brain, Modern Latin American Literature, Volcanoes, inter alia, and now…
Review by Julie Barham If you are interested in the process of finding objects from the past, this book, subtitled “Uncovering an Underground Obsession” will probably draw you in with…
Review by Rob Spence Last November, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, strikes by essential workers, transport chaos, a cost-of-living crisis and the continuing devastation of the war in…
Review by Karen Langley If you’re at all familiar with the mass of political rhetoric spouted in the media over recent years, you’ll have seen the phrase ‘levelling up’ appearing…
Reviewed by Harriet Seven hundred and fifty pages sounds like a lot until you realise this book covers the entire history of Hollywood from its very beginnings to almost the…
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long What is a courtier? According to dictionaries I have checked it seems there are two definitions: A person who is often in attendance at the court of…
Review by Karen Langley Back in 1933, George Orwell published his groundbreaking work Down and Out in Paris and London, which explored his experiences of poverty in both cities. Now,…