Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
Reviewed by Simon I’ve had the privilege of reviewing three different books by Oliver Sacks for Shiny New Books now, but this is the first since his sad death last year….
The Social Brain: How Diversity Made the Modern Mind by Richard Crisp
Reviewed by Anne Goodwin In the decades following the end of the Second World War, social psychology was preoccupied with an attempt to explain how ordinary people could commit such…
Charlotte Brontë: A Life, by Claire Harman
Reviewed by Barbara Howard Quoted in this book is Charlotte Brontë’s great aim and ambition in life ‘to be forever known’ as a poet, which she confided in a letter…
A Woman on the Edge of Time by Jeremy Gavron
Reviewed by Victoria In 1965, shortly before Christmas, a young, ambitious mother of two children on the brink of publishing her first book of sociology let herself into a friend’s…
Performing King Lear by Jonathan Croall
Reviewed by Harriet The role of King Lear is seen today as the ultimate challenge for the classical actor, the one that provides the supreme test of his abilities in…
The House of Elrig by Gavin Maxwell
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I discovered Gavin Maxwell’s books when newly exiled from a rural Scottish childhood. The first of his books that I found was Harpoon at a Venture. Drawn…
Beautiful and Impossible Things by Oscar Wilde
Reviewed by Karen Langley There’s always the danger that when an author becomes more famous than his works, those works will become so eclipsed that we’ll end up with an…
Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography by Claire Harman
Reviewed by Simon This marks the third biography I’ve reviewed in Shiny New Books that is about a major figure in my doctoral thesis – three out of three of…
Letters to the Sphinx by Oscar Wilde
Reviewed by Simon This is the reason that small reprint publishers exist. Who else would print this attractive slim volume – only 63 pages – and bring back into print…
More by Max Beerbohm
Reviewed by Simon Max Beerbohm’s name is known today, if at all, as the author of Zuleika Dobson – a curious sort of modernised Greek myth, where a preternaturally beautiful woman bewitches…
The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, second edition, edited by Jack Zipes
Reviewed by Helen Parry I’ve always loved the Oxford Companions, ever since I first encountered the Companion to English Literature about twenty-five years ago. They’re very easy to use and the alphabetically…
Mythology – An illustrated journey into our imagined worlds by Christopher Dell
Reviewed by Annabel. As picture books for grown ups go, Mythology is the business. Now available in soft covers, this nine inches square book yields glorious pictorial spreads from the very moment you…
The Oxford Companion to Wine 4th Edition by Jancis Robinson and Julia Harding
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton It was reading Jancis Robinson’s Confessions of a Wine Lover which initially pushed me to learn more about wine, and the second edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine that…
My Katherine Mansfield Project by Kirsty Gunn
Reviewed by Simon The premise for My Katherine Mansfield Project is admittedly rather niche. If one is not already a fan of Kirsty Gunn, then one had better be a fan of…
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, indeed, when I put it down…
Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance by Robert Gildea
Reviewed by Falaise Back in the ancient mists of time – or, at least, 1986 – a youthful version of me (think a bad David Bowie hairstyle perched on top…
Ezra Pound: Poet, Volume III by A. David Moody
Reviewed by Rob Spence A. David Moody’s monumental biography of Ezra Pound reaches its conclusion with this third and final volume. Having taken the story of Pound’s increasingly erratic life…
Renishaw Hall: The Story of the Sitwells by Desmond Seward
Reviewed by Ali Hope I read very few non-fiction books these days, but this was a book that ticked a number of boxes for me. I do like books about…
Worktown by David Hall
Reviewed by Harriet The Astonishing Story of the Project that Launched Mass-Observation So screams the cover of this book. I’m always a bit wary of cover blurbs, and I must…
The 101 Greatest Plays from Antiquity to the Present, by Michael Billington
Reviewed by Harriet As the longest-serving British theatre critic, a biographer, and a teacher and lecturer at several world-class universities, Michael Billington has some claim to being able to select…
Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson
Reviewed by Simon This is the third Shiny New Books issue in which I’ve had the privilege of writing about Shirley Jackson’s works – and, indeed, I’ve bolstered out those…
Think Like an Artist by Will Gompertz
Reviewed by Annabel Many of you will recognise Gompertz in his current role as the BBC’s Arts Editor, a role he fulfills with as much quirky charm as his subjects….
Jeremy Hutchinson’s Case Histories by Thomas Grant
Reviewed by Harriet No one becomes a criminal barrister to make large sums of money. A criminal practice has always been the least well paid and of the lowest status…
60 Degrees North by Malachy Tallack
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton When I first read about 60 Degrees North in Polygon’s book list back in the spring I was intrigued. I recognised Malachy Tallack’s name from various sources but…