July 23, 2020 Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics by Tom Keymer Reviewed by Harriet Today, Jane Austen is regarded as one of the most important writers in the English language, often spoken of in the…
March 31, 2020 A Little History of Poetry by John Carey Review by Rob Spence In 1935, the doyen of art critics, Ernst Gombrich, was a young, unemployed former student with a PhD in art…
February 6, 2020 Somewhere Becoming Rain: Collected Writings on Philip Larkin by Clive James Review by Karen Langley My love of the poetry of Philip Larkin is no secret; I’ve written about him numerous times on my own…
January 28, 2020 So Brightly at the Last by Ian Shircore Review by Rob Spence In one important respect, this book was outdated at the moment it was published: its subject, Clive James, having endured…
January 23, 2020 Why Women Read Fiction by Helen Taylor Review by Gill Davies Women read a lot more fiction than men; they also buy more books, attend writers’ events, blog, exchange ideas, and…
September 17, 2019 Moonlighting: Beethoven and Literary Modernism, by Nathan Waddell Review by Rob Spence When the newly-elected Brexit party MEPs took their place at the European Parliament in June, they used the opening ceremony…
February 13, 2018 The World Broke in Two by Bill Goldstein Reviewed by Harriet This enthralling multiple biography is subtitled ‘Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and the year that changed literature’. The…
January 30, 2018 Science Fiction: A Literary History edited by Roger Luckhurst Reviewed by Annabel Once upon a time SF was a subculture haunted by small populations of nerds and geeks. Star Wars (1977) changed that,…
January 18, 2018 In Search of Lost Books: The forgotten stories of eight mythical volumes by Giorgio van Straten Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is an engaging book about other books, but it makes no judgements on them, and nor can we express,…
December 5, 2017 A History of Children’s Books in 100 Books by Roderick Cave and Sarah Ayad Reviewed by Harriet Earlier this year I reviewed Martin Edwards’ Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, and very good it was too. So…
October 11, 2016 The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist by Orhan Pamuk Translated by Nazim Dikbas Reviewed by Rob Spence Orhan Pamuk, Nobel laureate, is the kind of public intellectual that we need to cherish, especially…
October 27, 2015 Latest Readings by Clive James Reviewed by Simon I have to confess that when I picked up Latest Readings, I knew very little about Clive James’ life and work. And,…
July 7, 2015 William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction by Stanley Wells Reviewed by Harriet How much can be said about the life and work of Shakespeare in just 135 pages? A surprising amount, in fact….
January 29, 2015 Where I’m Reading From by Tim Parks Reviewed by Annabel Many of us who are booklovers enjoy nothing more than reading a book about books. I’m familiar with Tim Parks through…
January 29, 2015 The Road to Middlemarch: My Life with George Eliot by Rebecca Mead Reviewed by Lory Widmer Hess No two readers can really read the same book. The nuances generated by our particular set of experiences, associations,…
July 30, 2014 The Trip to Echo Spring by Olivia Laing By Max Dunbar A decade or so into his career as a bestselling novelist, horror writer Stephen King ran into problems. He was drinking…
July 24, 2014 The Most Dangerous Book; The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham Reviewed by Max Dunbar This study of how James Joyce’s Ulysses came to be published and set in type is almost as essential as the book…
July 21, 2014 Shakespeare & Me, edited by Susannah Carson Reviewed by Simon Thomas A few years ago, I very much enjoyed A Truth Universally Acknowledged, an anthology of writers and readers celebrating Jane Austen,…
April 18, 2014 How to be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis Reviewed by Jane Carter I was smitten as soon as I saw the title, but when I saw the cover—a pile of books is…
