Women of the World by Helen McCarthy
Reviewed by Victoria Best When I was sitting my A levels back in 1987, my school thought itself very advanced because it gave us all a careers questionnaire to fill…
Reviewed by Victoria Best When I was sitting my A levels back in 1987, my school thought itself very advanced because it gave us all a careers questionnaire to fill…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Some readers will have seen the rather excellent film An Education, based upon an episode in veteran journalist Lynn Barber’s life as a teenager where she fell…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas I’m going to be honest, when I picked up a biography a little-known turn-of-the-century poet, I wasn’t expecting it to be a page turner. I’d never read…
Reviewed by Rob Spence John Carey has had a long and distinguished career in academia, and this autobiography records his journey from childhood in the war to his current position…
Reviewed by Terence Jagger When I first heard of an English cricket tour to Germany in 1937, I assumed it was essentially subversive – that the tour would have been…
Reviewed by Peter Hobson The name John Gribbin will be familiar to many readers with an interest in understanding the mysterious quantum world as he is well known for books…
Reviewed by Lizzy Siddal It is a piece of weakness and folly merely to value things because of the distance from the place where we are born: thus men have…
Reviewed by Rachel Fenn Sissinghurst is the sort of place that you can’t help but fall in love with at first sight, even if you have absolutely no interest in…
Translated by Silvester Mazzarella Reviewed by Simon Thomas Tove Jansson is one of my very favourite authors, and I often recommend her to friends and fellow bibliophiles. Each time, except…
Reviewed by Victoria Best Best book of the year so far is Stephen Grosz’s compilation of case stories from his thirty years as a psychotherapist, The Examined Life; How We Lose…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas When I first heard that A.L. Kennedy had written a book called On Writing – now out in paperback – I was intrigued and very keen to read…
Reviewed by Victoria Best In Andrew Wilson’s fascinating account of Sylvia Plath before she met Ted Hughes, she comes across as the Britney Spears of the poetry world. There’s the…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas It’s a shame, in some respects, that our divisions on Shiny New Books don’t allow for subcategories within non-ficton, because you might be assuming (if the name…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Writing a biography is easy, right? You just have to find out lots of facts about the person, and string them together to make them readable….
Reviewed by Jane Carter I was smitten as soon as I saw the title, but when I saw the cover—a pile of books is always a good thing and this…
Reviewed by Victoria Best Of all the truly terrifying experiences that life can hold, I would imagine that being kidnapped and held hostage must be up there with the worst…
Reviewed by Victoria Best In the autumn of 2003, James Lasdun ran a fiction workshop at an American college where he met a talented Iranian-American student whom he calls ‘Nasreen’….
Reviewed by Simon Thomas In a year where we almost certainly going to be inundated with books about World War One, it seems a little perverse to be publishing a…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down twenty-three steps into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. The eldest was twenty-two, the youngest only…
Reviewed by Jackie Bailey Five words from the blurb: parents, exceptional, children, difference, acceptance. Far From the Tree is the most important book I’ve ever read. It is a masterpiece of…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell I wish Tracey Thorn was my cousin, sister even. I can say that – for we share not only a maiden name, but a love of…
Written by Victoria Best I begin to wonder whether there is an entry in the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) for readers like me, who find themselves…
Translated by Luba Loffe Reviewed by Karen Langley Speak, memory, that I may not forget the taste of roses, nor the sound of ashes in the wind; That I may…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine For the past couple of years, I have been fascinated by the events of WW2, and have found myself drawn again and again to novels written…