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 blog, and most recently my encounter…
Learning Languages in Early Modern England by John Gallagher
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…
Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide, by Barry Forshaw
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies When I started teaching popular fiction courses forty years ago, having always been more drawn to Jesse James than to Henry James, there were sneers aplenty…
Art Essentials: Impressionism by Ralph Skea
Review by Liz Dexter Another volume in the excellently done Art Essentials series, this volume on Impressionism is written by Ralph Skea, an artist and academic who has published several…
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Review by Rob Spence In one important respect, this book was outdated at the moment it was published: its subject, Clive James, having endured a terminal illness for ten years,…
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 form reading groups. Helen Taylor’s research…
Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World by Marcia Bjornerud
Review by Peter Reason I have on my desk three pieces of rock, collected during my ecological pilgrimage on in the west coast of Scotland, that I wrote about in…
Tales of the Troubled Dead: Ghost Stories in Cultural History – Catherine Belsey
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…
Fashionopolis by Dana Thomas
Review by Anna Hollingsworth My immediate reaction was a desperately deep sigh when, pre-launch, Dana Thomas’s Fashionopolis was trumpeted as a must-read revelatory work on the fashion industry. Surely anyone…
Galileo’s Error: A New Science of Consciousness by Philip Goff
Review by Peter Reason This is a book about the philosophical perspective of panpsychism, written by a leading academic advocate. Panpsychism is an awkward word, not part of everyday vocabulary….
Home Work by Julie Andrews
with Emma Walton Hamilton Review by Annabel Julie Andrews’s first volume of memoir, Home, told us of her childhood, growing up during the war, and her early career on stage in…
Violencia – A New History of Spain: Past, Present and the Future of the West, by Jason Webster
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…
How to Read a Photograph: Understanding, Interpreting and Enjoying the Great Photographers by Ian Jeffrey
Review by Liz Dexter Of course, reading a photograph is subjective – there are not really any rules for what makes a photograph great or why a particular person will…
The Summer Isles by Philip Marsden
Reviewed by Peter Reason The Summer Isles is an account of a single-handed voyage from the south coast of England round the west of Ireland and on to the northwest…
Gloucester Crescent by William Miller
Review by Annabel Nestled between Primrose Hill and Camden Town in NW1, it’s hard to believe that Gloucester Crescent (and Regents Park Terrace which joins its ends) was ever considered…
Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie
Review by Peter Reason Kathleen Jamie is primarily known as a poet, but her prose writing is eagerly anticipated and widely acclaimed. Surfacing is the third in a loose trilogy…
Art Essentials: Street Art by Simon Armstrong
Review by Liz Dexter The Art Essentials series aims to be engaging, accessible, authoritative, richly illustrated and expertly written and conceived, and with a bookseller and book collector who has…
Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Review by Simon As the cover of Confessions of a Bookseller tells us, Bythell is an international bestseller. A couple of years ago, The Diary of a Bookseller was a…
The Pursuit of Art: Travels, Encounters and Revelations by Martin Gayford
Review by Liz Dexter “The pursuit of art is a journey that never stops: the more you see, the more you want to see.” First of all much kudos to…
Rough Magic: Riding the World’s Wildest Horse Race by Lara Prior-Palmer
Review by Liz Dexter Lara is by her own account a bit scatter-brained. She’s been described as away with the fairies, didn’t see the point of school past a certain…
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 as a stunt, turning their backs…
Futurekind: Design by and for the People by Robert Phillips
Review by Liz Dexter Robert Phillips is a senior tutor on the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art, as well as being an award-winning product designer in…
The Remarkable Life of the Skin by Monty Lyman
Review by Simon. The number of science books I’ve read can be numbered on my fingers, and number of science books I’ve read that weren’t written by Oliver Sacks is nil. Until…
Anna of Kleve – Queen of Secrets by Alison Weir
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…