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…
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…
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…
Reviewed by Harriet If you gave me a choice between a collection of short stories and a novel, I’d choose the novel every time. I suppose it’s something to do…
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…
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…
Review by Gill Davies This is a first novel by a practising barrister and is billed as “a legal thriller with a psychological twist”. It comes with plaudits from –…
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…
Review by Annabel Let me explain. This Thursday, a film called Argylle reaches our cinema screens in the UK; you may even have seen the trailer (IMDB link here). This…
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…
Reviewed by Harriet This is the eleventh novel in Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey historical crime series; we’ve reviewed four of them on here as well as her standalone fictional biography…
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,…
Review by Simon A new novel by Michael Cunningham is cause for celebration. I’ve read and loved all his novels – give or take a not-to-my-taste venture into science fiction…
Review by Rob Spence We are in London at its Victorian zenith, a city of imperial majesty, and also a city where the most abject poverty exists side-by-side with the…
Reviewed by Harriet The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand. I was a small child then, soft at the belly. On that night my mother took me…
Review by Lix Dexter This is a book about the relationship between how we speak and who we are. More precisely, it’s a book about the role of spoken language,…
Reviewed by Harriet ‘I’m sick of those two.’ The words arrived in my mouth like hard, round pebbles, threatened to take up all the space. I stopped for a moment,…
Last autumn the Shiny Eds, decided to scale back the number of reviews posted each week at Shiny New Books to keep everything manageable! This year, we have still posted…
The growth of social media seems to have generated a huge increase in madness. Not real madness, of course. Rather, it’s the condition affected by so many TikTokers and Instagrammers,…
Introduction by Simon Thomas Reviewed by Harriet Devine When I saw the title and the snowflakey cover of this winter offering from the British Library Women Writers series, I thought…
Reviewed by Rob Spence I was once assured by a James Joyce scholar that there was more critical material on Joyce than there was on Shakespeare – pretty good going,…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Even if the ‘Rewilding your Garden’ chapter seems the only one of practical use to you – or, indeed, if you only have a window box…
Reviewed by Karen Langley Bodleian Library Publishing is an imprint attached to Oxford University which specialises in bringing out books that share the riches of the Bodley’s wide-ranging collections with…
Review by Annabel Ever since I read and reviewed this novel, back in the spring of 2015 when it was first published – my review for Shiny is here –…
Reviewed by Harriet Like me, many people will have been waiting impatiently for the next installment of the ongoing saga of private detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. Some (not…