August 4, 2015 Mermaids by Sophia Kingshill Reviewed by Harriet once I sat upon a promontoryAnd heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s backUttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,That the rude sea…
July 21, 2015 The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua Reviewed by Peter Hobson Punchycards! [1] If that word brings a smile of recognition to your lips then almost certainly you will not need…
July 14, 2015 The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson Reviewed by Rebecca Hussey Maggie Nelson has had what one might call a cult following ever since the 2009 publication of her genre-bending essayistic…
April 22, 2015 Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson Reviewed by Max Dunbar There’s an episode of the classic US prison show Oz where a new governor brings back the death penalty and sentences Jefferson Keane,…
April 10, 2015 The Book of Margery Kempe Translated by Anthony Bale Reviewed by Harriet Margery Kempe (c.1373-after 1439) was an extraordinary woman, and this is an extraordinary book. It’s often referred…
April 9, 2015 The Nuns of Sant’ Ambrogio by Hubert Wolf Translated by Ruth Martin Reviewed by Harriet This is certainly an extraordinary and fascinating book. Written by a celebrated German papal historian, it manages…
January 29, 2015 Merchant Adventurers by James Evans Reviewed by Liz Dexter In the mid-1500s, three ships set off from London to seek a passage to the famed untold riches of the…
January 27, 2015 The Poet’s Tale: Chaucer and the Year that Made the Canterbury Tales by Paul Strohm Written by Victoria So what’s a medieval historian to do with a figure like Chaucer? A man who still exerts a fascination over his…
January 27, 2015 Taking Command by David Richards Reviewed by Terence Jagger This was an unusual read for me, as I know the author pretty well, having worked alongside him for a…
January 27, 2015 In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon’s Wars by Jenny Uglow Reviewed by Jenny Jenny Uglow has delved into the diaries and letters of an abundance of ordinary people — farmers, soldiers, artisans, and their…
January 22, 2015 Germany – Memories of a Nation by Neil MacGregor Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a splendid book, a real celebration of Germany’s history, and its great contributions to our liberal western civilisation…
October 28, 2014 The Making of Home by Judith Flanders Reviewed by Harriet One of the most important distinctions made by Judith Flanders in this fascinating book is that between the concepts of house…
October 23, 2014 Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama Reviewed by Edward Leigh This is the successor volume to The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, which together offer…
October 22, 2014 The Smile Revolution by Colin Jones Reviewed by Harriet I must admit I was initially drawn to this book by the lovely painting on the cover, a self-portrait by the…
October 16, 2014 The Gardens at Brantwood: Evolution of John Ruskin’s Lakeland Paradise by David Ingram Reviewed by Barb Scharf. “It comes as something of a surprise to most people to consider Ruskin the Gardener. Ruskin has been much written…
October 14, 2014 Bed Manners by Dr Ralph Hopton and Anne Balliol Reviewed by Simon Thomas One of the more niche tastes I have, when it comes to books, is for fake etiquette guides (for which…
October 14, 2014 A Message From Martha by Mark Avery Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is an important centenary year; on 1 September, 1914, the world’s last Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) died in Cincinnati…
October 13, 2014 The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome by Gordon Campbell Reviewed by Barb Scharf If you were a member of the English aristocracy residing in Shropshire in the Georgian era, late 1700s to early…
October 9, 2014 A Strange Business: Making Art and Money in Nineteenth-Century Britain by James Hamilton Reviewed by Frances Ambler Mention art and money together and the chances are it’ll conjure up an image of some Saatchi-esque super dealer or…
July 18, 2014 The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a famous and fascinating book, and I think anyone interested in the Great War, or the wider question…
July 18, 2014 Over the Ocean by Erica Fischer Translated by Andrew Brown Reviewed by Jean Morris The media were full of the D-Day commemorations as I read this book – stories of…
July 17, 2014 One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson Reviewed by Harriet Devine If I were to make a list of things I probably wouldn’t want to read a book about, aeroplanes, cars, baseball…
July 11, 2014 Domestic Manners of the Americans by Frances Trollope Reviewed by Harriet Devine No author of the present day has been at once so much read, so much admired and so much abused….
July 10, 2014 Hotel Florida: Truth, Love and Death in the Spanish Civil War by Amanda Vaill Reviewed by Harriet Devine The Spanish Civil War (1936-39), a messy, bloody conflict in which Spanish Republicans fought to save their country from the…
July 10, 2014 The Valley by Richard Benson Reviewed by Victoria Best The best kind of non-fiction, I think, shows us how supposedly ‘average’ ordinary lives are really quite extraordinary. In the…
