Review by Liz Dexter The processes of selection, acquisition and cataloguing, as well as of disposal and retention, are never neutral acts. They are done by human beings, working in…
Review by Karen Langley It could be argued that much fiction is in a sense autobiographical, and one man who certainly poured his life into his work, drawing on his…
Review by Karen Langley Monica Jones, the subject of a new biography by John Sutherland, is a fascinating figure who, up until now, has generally been discussed in terms of…
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Why country X? Why language Y? Anyone who has lived abroad or taken up a foreign language will be familiar with those questions. So, too, Polly…
Review by Helen Parry In spring 1944 the English officer Esmond Warner attended a party in Bari hosted by a widow, Signora Terzulli, and her four beautiful daughters. One of…
Review by Annabel There is a particular sub-genre of memoir that almost goes into biography but fundamentally remains a memoir. I’m talking about memoirs of friendships like Tracey Thorn’s latest…
Review by Peter Reason Sam Lee is a renowned song collector, interpreter, and singer of folk songs from Britain and Ireland; he has an abiding interest in wilderness studies and…
Reviewed by Harriet In this impressively detailed book, shortlisted for this year’s Wolfson History Prize, Helen McCarthy surveys the lives of women who worked for pay, ‘what they have thought…
While Shiny New Books concentrates on the new, occasionally, we give our reviewers room to share previously published – ie: ‘not Shiny New Books’ – they have been enjoying. Review…
Review by Liz Dexter “This place, this land, wasn’t a job or a business: it was everything – past and future, identity and rhythm, daily bread and Sunday rest.” Reading…
Review by Peter Reason Elizabeth Kolbert is a celebrated American journalist, staff writer for the New Yorker. Her work focuses unflinchingly on the ecological challenges of our time, as can…
Reviewed by Gill Davies This is a remarkable book about a remarkable woman. Valentine Ackland (1906-1969) was “transgressive” in so many ways. She was a cross-dressing lesbian; a communist from…
Reviewed by Max Dunbar The Gallery of Souls I’ve Known Many years ago, novelist Rachel Kushner worked in a bar called the Blue Lamp in San Francisco. On weekday afternoons,…
Reviewed by Michael Eaude This is the memoir of a volunteer to the International Brigades, formed to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Jimmy Jump (1916-1990) was a…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter “Who are we? Where do we come from? What is Britain, and what does it mean to be British?” This book opens eerily similarly to Sathnam…
Review by Hayley Anderton This is the first of the Daunt Books essay collections that I’ve read and I’m mostly impressed. The quality of the individual essays is universally high…
Reviewed by Rob Spence Lucy Newlyn is a intriguing literary figure. She had a career as an Oxford don, publishing well-regarded studies of Romantic poets as well as collections of…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter “If we don’t confront the reality of what happened in British empire, we will never be able to work out who we are or who we…
Reviewed by Rob Spence Kenneth Price is the co-director of the Walt Whitman Archive, and one of the leading experts on the poet, having published widely on his work. This…
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 Karen Langley The early part of the 20th century was a period when modern art was flourishing. New ways of living were being explored, abstract art forms were…
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 Lory Widmer-Hess Schizophrenic. The very word is a trigger for aversion, a signal to run away, with its spiky, spluttered consonants and imprisoned vowels, four foreign syllables meaning…
Reviewed by Peter Reason It was on a family skiing holiday that Horatio Clare finally went mad. This was the culmination of a period of high activity and stress, coupled…
