And Time Was No More: Essential Stories and Memories, by Teffi
Edited and annotated by Robert Chandler Review by Karen Langley The last decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Russian émigré writing with a host of forgotten…
Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliff
Reviewed by Harriet Who remembers reading The Eagle of the Ninth? First published in 1954, when Sutcliff was 34, it is set in Roman Britain and tells the story of…
Rural Hours – The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann by Harriet Baker
Reviewed by Gill Davies In the summer of 1917 Virginia Woolf was living at Asheham, a house near Lewes in Sussex. She was 35 and hadn’t written anything for two…
Anthony Burgess, The Devil Prefers Mozart: On Music and Musicians 1962 – 1993, edited by Paul Phillips
Review by Rob Spence Anthony Burgess was, of course, one of the most significant novelists of the second half of the twentieth century, publishing over thirty novels, (a centenary reading…
Secret Voices: A Year of Women’s Diaries, edited by Sarah Gristwood
Reviewed by Harriet I have set myself many tasks for the year – I wonder how many will be accomplished? A Novel called Middlemarch, a long poem on Timoleon, and…
Power and Glory: Elizabeth II and the Rebirth of Royalty, by Alexander Larman
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long When Alexander Larman wrote The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication about Edward VIII, he had no idea that it would be the beginning of…
Head North by Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham
Review by Rob Spence When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced in October last year that the multi-billion pound rail infrastructure programme HS2 would not, after all, be completed, leaving Manchester…
Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence, by Avril Horner
Reviewed by Harriet In the back of my mind I was always sure that wonderful things were waiting for me, but I’d got to get through a lot of horrors…
A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley
Review by Karen Langley Back in the 20th century, the world was a very different place to live in if you were female and/or gay. Equal pay was a pipe…
How to Be Multiple: The Philosophy of Twins, by Helena de Bres, illustrated by Julia de Bres
Reviewed by Simon Thomas When I discovered there was a new collection of essays out about the philosophy of twins, and that it was written by an identical twin, I…
Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s hidden histories, by Amitav Ghosh
Review by Peter Reason The term ‘narco state’ usually refers to those countries whose economy has been taken over by the cultivation of the opium poppy and the criminal gangs…
What Do I Know? by Michel de Montaigne
Translated by David Coward Review by Karen Langley The essay as a form of writing has existed for centuries, and one of its pre-eminent practitioners was the French author Michel…
Shiny Prize Season – A Flat Place by Noreen Masud – Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction
Reviewed by Simon Thomas The world is probably divided into two people: those who find the idea of a book about flat landscapes appealing and those who don’t. I suspect…
Selected Letters of Wilfred Owen, edited by Jane Potter
Review by Rob Spence If you attended a British secondary school at any time from the late nineteen sixties until the present day, at some point you will have encountered…
The Future of Trust by Ros Taylor – blogtour
The Futures Series from indie publisher Melville House UK recently launched with four titles that couldn’t be more different from each other: going from Songwriting, to Trust, to War Crimes…
Marcel Proust by Michael Wood
Review by Rob Spence It’s not often that one gets the chance to begin a review with a boast, so I’ll get it over with now: I have read À…
Human Origins: A Short History, by Sarah Wild
Review by Liz Dexter I have […] tried to highlight how much our understanding of human origins has changed – and continues to change – and how, in some ways,…
Charles III: New King, New Court: The Inside Story, by Robert Hardman
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long There is a plethora of journalists who are labelled Royal Experts and I sometimes wonder how you reach these giddy heights, if that is how you…
In Italy, by Cynthia Zarin
Review by Rob Spence This is a curious little book, which shouldn’t really work, but does, offering the reader a delightful series of fresh impressions gleaned from the writer’s engagement…
Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wilderness by Alastair Humphreys
We have just this one tiny planet to live on, now and for the foreseeable future. We must care for it, and use its resources wisely, sustainability, and fairly. If…
Jan Morris: Life From Both Sides, by Paul Clements
Review by Liz Dexter My hope is that this biography will send readers back to Jan Morris’s books, to either reread them of, for those who have yet to discover…
A Year and a Day by Phillip Lopate
Review by Karen Langley The coming of the Internet and the development of blogging at the turn of the 21st century led to a resurgence of the personal essay, which…
The Long-Winded Lady by Maeve Brennan
Review by Karen Langley There has been a resurgence of interest in the fiction writing of author Maeve Brennan recently, with her short stories in particular having gained much critical…
Shakespeare: The Man who Pays the Rent, by Judi Dench
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long If I had my way every single teacher in the land who is attempting to teach Shakespeare should have a copy of this to hand as,…