Reviewed by Liz Dexter You may remember Tammet from his autism memoir, Born on a Blue Day, and his fascination with words and languages as well as numbers continues until the…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Brain surgeon Henry Marsh’s first book, Do No Harm, was one of my favorite reads of 2015 [reviewed by Annabel here]. In short, enthrallingly detailed chapters named after conditions…
Reviewed by Annabel Imagine that you train a computer to read and analyse books, input a mix of hundreds and ask it to predict which books are most likely to…
Reviewed by Harriet Here at Shiny we love our classic crime, and we have been delighted to review a number of excellent novels that have recently made available through the…
Review by Liz Dexter This entertaining and thought-provoking book is both a state-of-the-nation essay and an exercise in historical research and re-enactment and Maconie, being a seasoned writer and man…
Reviewed by Harriet The subtitle of this book is ‘The hidden friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf’, which sounds very promising. I’ll start by saying that I found some…
Review by Karen Langley You could be forgiven for thinking that the last thing the world needs is yet another book about the poet, writer and artist Sylvia Plath. She’s…
By Diana Cheng To wrap up a week of Jane Austen celebration, here’s an annotated list of adaptations of her works on both the small and big screens, productions that…
Reviewed by Harriet If you’re a watcher of historical TV documentaries, you won’t need introducing to Lucy Worsley, who presents history programmes for the BBC, in which she often dresses…
Review by Liz Dexter Nick Baker is a well-known naturalist, writer and broadcaster, whose work here, described by the publisher as “a memoir of sorts” but really very different from…
Reviewed by Helen Parry Among the many people Anne Sebba interviewed for this book was the playwright Jean-Claude Grumberg. During the German occupation of France, Grumberg’s Jewish mother paid a…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Mitch Prinstein is an expert on popularity, but he uses lots of other people’s experiments as well as his own to back up his claims in…
Review by Laura Marriott Like many people I first came to know Tony Robinson through his role as Baldrick on Blackadder, before following him as he helmed Time Team. This…
Translated by Martina Devis & Malcolm Imrie Reviewed by Terence Jagger Monsieur Rufin is an impressive man, having founded Médecins sans Frontières, been an ambassador for France in Senegal, written…
Review by Harriet The deaths of poets matter to us because they become a lens through which to look at the poems. So say the authors, both poets themselves, in…
Review by Harriet ‘Aphra Behn was a woman who wore masks’. So says Janet Todd at the beginning of this monumental, newly revised biography of Behn, who was a prolific…
Reviewed by Karen Langley This year is the centenary of the birth of author and artist Leonora Carrington, and we’re being treated to a wonderful array of issues and reissues…
Reviewed by Harriet Dominic Dromgoole was the Artistic Director of London’s Globe Theatre from 2005 to 2016. During this successful period he initiated many memorable achievements, including a 2012 festival…
Review by Rob Spence Ask a reasonably well-educated person to name some Anglophone modernist poets, and you are sure to hear the names of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Mention…
Review by Hayley Anderton Where I live – middle of a city, no garden, bins inside, and nobody feeding them, foxes are a delight to see. They seem generally indifferent…
Reviewed by Rob Spence I come from Manchester, so I know about rain. Actually, Manchester’s reputation as the rainy city is, as I am overfond of pointing out, a result…
Reviewed by Helen Parry In the extreme northern part of France lies the plain of Flanders, a great fertile expanse rolling inland from the sea until it meets a chain…
Reviewed by Harriet For some reason I’ve always been fascinated by child prodigies – people who seem to have been born with an innate talent for something, which very often…
Translated by Amanda DeMarco Reviewed by Rob Spence Berlin is one of my favourite cities, and I have spent a lot of time walking around its fascinating streets. So the…
