June 16, 2020 Home Computers: 100 Icons that Defined a Digital Generation by Alex Wiltshire and John Short Reviewed by Liz Dexter Being born in the early 70s, I reached the age where we develop interests just as the first cheaper home…
June 11, 2020 Wayfinding by Michael Bond Review by Terence Jagger I found this book absolutely fascinating. I have always been fairly confident in my abilities as a navigator (though with…
June 9, 2020 The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans by David Abulafia Review by Liz Dexter The reason this book is in the news now is that it has been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize…
June 4, 2020 Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years, ed. Catrin Jones and Chris Stephens Review by Liz Dexter Grayson Perry has achieved the status of National Treasure in the hearts and minds of a large proportion of the…
June 2, 2020 Greenery: Journeys in Springtime by Tim Dee (2020) Review by Rebecca Foster From the Cape of Good Hope to the Arctic Circle, Dee tracks the spring as it travels north. From first…
May 28, 2020 Tracks: Walking the Ancient Landscapes of Britain by Philip Hughes Softback review by Liz Dexter This quietly stunning book will appeal to anyone interested in art, landscape, walking, geology, geography, maps and ancient monuments….
May 26, 2020 Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils by David Farrier Review by Peter Reason In 2013, a spring storm uncovered, on the shores of Norfolk, the oldest traces of humanity discovered outside Africa: fossil…
May 21, 2020 Well-kept Secrets: The Story of William Wordsworth by Andrew Wordsworth Reviewed by Harriet As I’m sure you’ve noticed, this year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wordsworth, one of England’s most celebrated…
May 19, 2020 Diary Of A Foreigner In Paris, by Curzio Malaparte Translated by Stephen Twilley Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies An adjective frequently applied to Curzio Malaparte is ‘colourful’. To the Cambridge dictionary it means ‘vivid,…
May 12, 2020 Oats in the North Wheat from the South by Regula Ysewijn Review by Hayley Anderton I know it’s not the easiest time to get baking supplies, or books, or enough exercise to work off the…
April 30, 2020 Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights by Helen Lewis 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…
April 23, 2020 ‘Not’ the Wellcome Prize Blog Tour 2020 #2 – Galileo’s Error by Philip Goff The Wellcome Book Prize is on hiatus this year – we really hope it’ll return in 2021 as this unique prize, which celebrates literature…
April 23, 2020 ‘Not’ the Wellcome Prize Blog Tour 2020 #1 – Vagina A Re-Education by Lynn Enright The Wellcome Book Prize is on hiatus this year – we really hope it’ll return in 2021 as this unique prize, which celebrates literature…
April 21, 2020 Let’s Talk: How English Conversation Works by David Crystal Review by Liz Dexter “What makes a successful conversation?” is a question David Crystal considers asking people in his new book – and, well,…
April 16, 2020 Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild by Lucy Jones Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Back in early March, just before literary events started being cancelled due to coronavirus, I had the good fortune to…
April 14, 2020 The Birds They Sang: Birds and People in Life and Art by Stanisław Łubieński Translated from Polish by Bill Johnston Review by Peter Reason Stanisław Łubieński first began observing birds in childhood through Soviet binoculars. Later, he took…
April 9, 2020 A Bite of the Apple by Lennie Goodings Review by Simon There’s a certain variety of person who can always spot a bottle-green spine at a hundred paces, and has faced the…
April 9, 2020 Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Review by Peter Reason There has been a lot of interest recently in the idea of ‘rewilding’, expressed for example in Isabella Tree’s Wilding:…
April 7, 2020 She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen: British Women in India by Katie Hickman 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…
April 7, 2020 A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen by Martin Gayford and David Hockney Reviewed by Liz Dexter This is a new ‘compact’ edition of this book, with a revised final chapter bringing it all up to date,…
April 2, 2020 Drinking French by David Lebovitz Review by Hayley Anderton Before everything started to close down the books I had been particularly anticipating, ordering, and reading, were mostly food and…
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…
March 17, 2020 James Joyce by Edna O’Brien Review by Rob Spence Edna O’Brien’s position as one of the most significant modern Irish writers is undisputed, and here, in this reissue of…
March 10, 2020 The Author’s Effects by Nicola J. Watson Reviewed by Harriet This splendid and fascinating book – subtitled ‘On Writer’s House Museums’ – has been a long time in the making, and…
March 5, 2020 Red Sixty Seven, curated by Kit Jewitt Review by Peter Reason When I was a small boy, back in the 1950s, I remember going on Sunday School trips to the seaside….
