Commemorative Modernisms by Alice Kelly
Review by Rob Spence Modernism has always resisted precise definition, and in recent years it has been normal in literary-critical circles to use the plural form in order to emphasise…
Review by Rob Spence Modernism has always resisted precise definition, and in recent years it has been normal in literary-critical circles to use the plural form in order to emphasise…
Reviewed by Harriet It’s probably a common experience among people who read a lot that sometimes two books will overlap in unexpected ways. This has just happened to me. I…
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…
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 Liz Dexter It used to be that we attended exhibitions and treated ourselves to the catalogue in the shop on the way out. Now, it’s more a case…
Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies Believe it or not, the occult is always a source of fascination. For the persuaded, it offers an expanded view of reality, free from the constraints…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter I will say right away that this is probably not the book you think it will be. The subtitle suggests it will be a history of…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I thought I’d learnt to check how long a book is before I agreed or offered to review it, but I’m in this case I had…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter This extremely well-researched and authoritative book takes us through the Second World War, in the UK, the US, the Far and Middle East and Europe, through…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter A book that is in turns entertaining, lyrical and shocking, you won’t think about the countryside – or the rivers – of England in quite the…
Translated by Frank Wynne Reviewed by Annabel I write from the realms of the ugly, for the ugly, the old, the bull dykes, the frigid, the unfucked, the unfuckable, the…
Review by Annabel O’Connell is an Irish journalist who won the Wellcome Book Prize for his previous title, To Be a Machine (which I reviewed for Shiny here). His exploration…
Review by Peter Reason Minna Salami is a Nigerian and Finnish social critic, founder of the MsAfropolitan blog, who draws on Africa-centric and feminist perspectives to offer a more inclusive…
Review by Liz Dexter The reason this book is in the news now is that it has been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize (more on the shortlist here). I…
Review by Liz Dexter First of all a caveat, in case any keen-eyed reader finds my name in the acknowledgements: I did work on this book in my professional capacity,…
Reviewed by Harriet What an enticing title! Made even more so by the sub-title, ‘British Women in India’. Katie Hickman, who herself led a peripatetic life as the daughter of…
Review by Karen Langley “Square Haunting” was published to much fanfare and acclaim recently; a book which looks at the lives of five notable women centred around a specific Bloomsbury…
Review by Liz Dexter Has it ever struck you that before England obtained its empire, no one else in the world bothered to speak the language? Did you realise what…
Review by Hayley Anderton Tales of the weird have a deep hold on our collective imagination, and of all the things we’ve given credence to over the course of human…
Review by Michael Eaude. Jason Webster takes a long, long view of Spanish history. Most history books concentrate on small chunks of time: this or that war; or a defined…
Review by Julie Barham It is well known that Henry VIII had six wives – and none more mysterious than the one that he married virtually unseen, and parted from…
Edited by: Farrell, Clare, Alison Green, Sam Knights, and William Skeaping Review by Peter Reason There cannot be many followers of Shiny New Books who are not aware of the…
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies In Stephen Dobyns’ murder mystery Saratoga Swimmer Charlie Bradshaw, unlicensed private eye and true-crime addict, recounts the story of New York gangster Dutch Schultz’s 1935 assassination…