April 21, 2022 This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music, edited by Sinéad Gleeson and Kim Gordon Review by Liz Dexter This is a collection of writing by women about music, mainly about women in music, put together by visual artist,…
March 31, 2022 Brittle With Relics: A History of Wales 1962-1997 by Richard King Review by Liz Dexter In this extraordinary book, Richard King takes the voices of a hundred Welsh people who were active in various forms…
March 1, 2022 No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader by Mark Hodkinson Review by Liz Dexter While he’s now a publisher and editor with his own imprint, Hodkinson grew up in a terrace house in Rochdale…
February 24, 2022 Two debut novels: Brown Girls, & Black Cake Review by Liz Dexter I’d like to introduce you to two astoundingly accomplished debut novels, so well done that you would not think they…
February 3, 2022 White Debt by Thomas Harding Review by Liz Dexter As a child, I was taught that Britain had been the first nation to abolish slavery, that the effort had…
December 9, 2021 Hey Hi Hello: Five decades of Pop Culture from Britain’s Broadcasting DJ Pioneer by Annie Nightingale Review by Liz Dexter Nightingale was the first female DJ on Radio One, having been a journalist and live TV presenter before then and…
November 11, 2021 Allegorizings by Jan Morris Review by Liz Dexter “If I had any moral principles to declare, I came to realize, they were extremely simplistic. First, there was the…
October 26, 2021 Lion City: Singapore and the Invention of Modern Asia by Jeevan Vasagar Review by Liz Dexter Open to global flows of capital but largely closed to political change, Singapore is a reform-minded dictator’s dream, suggesting that…
October 19, 2021 Light Rains Sometimes Fall: A British Year Through Japan’s 72 Seasons by Lev Parikian Review by Liz Dexter “For Japan’s lotus blossom, praying mantis and bear, we have bramble, wood louse and urban fox” Lev Parikian, a writer,…
October 5, 2021 The Right Sort of Girl by Anita Rani Review by Liz Dexter How on earth did I get to where I am today? This is no overnight success story, this is not…
September 30, 2021 The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye By Liz Dexter This book is primarily concerned with explaining how society, as it is currently arranged, often makes trans people’s lives unnecessarily difficult….
September 7, 2021 Your Voice Speaks Volumes: It’s Not What You Say but How You Say It, by Jane Setter Review by Liz Dexter I would like the message of this chapter to be that we should all be more tolerant of people’s voice…
August 31, 2021 A Room of Her Own: Inside the Homes and Lives of Creative Women by Robyn Lea Review by Liz Dexter Robyn Lea has a theory that there is a new Renaissance happening among creative women, who are expressing themselves and…
August 3, 2021 Broken Greek by Pete Paphides Reviewed by Liz Dexter Stuck with a bunch of friends who seemed to think I was something other than what I was; guilty about…
June 7, 2021 Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack by Richard Ovenden Review by Liz Dexter The processes of selection, acquisition and cataloguing, as well as of disposal and retention, are never neutral acts. They are…
May 25, 2021 Field Work: What Land Does to People and What People Do to Land by Bella Bathurst Review by Liz Dexter “This place, this land, wasn’t a job or a business: it was everything – past and future, identity and rhythm,…
May 11, 2021 Digging up Britain: A New History in Ten Extraordinary Discoveries by Mike Pitts Reviewed by Liz Dexter “Who are we? Where do we come from? What is Britain, and what does it mean to be British?” This…
April 29, 2021 Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera Reviewed by Liz Dexter “If we don’t confront the reality of what happened in British empire, we will never be able to work out…
April 1, 2021 Hyphens & Hashtags* by Claire Cock-Starkey Reviewed by Liz Dexter Subtitled “The stories behind the symbols on our keyboards” (the subtitle linked to the main title via an asterisk rather…
March 2, 2021 Grayson’s Art Club: The Exhibition (Manchester Art Gallery, 2020) Reviewed by Liz Dexter Back at the beginning of the first lockdown, Grayson Perry, potter and tapestry maker extraordinaire and no stranger to intimate…
February 2, 2021 Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights, edited by Polly Russell and Margaretta Jolly Reviewed by Liz Dexter It used to be that we attended exhibitions and treated ourselves to the catalogue in the shop on the way…
December 15, 2020 Fifty Words for Snow by Nancy Campbell Reviewed by Liz Dexter I greatly enjoyed reading Nancy Campbell’s meditation on the icy places of the world, The Library of Ice. last year,…
December 1, 2020 Follies: An Architectural Journey by Rory Fraser Reviewed by Liz Dexter A delightful little book put out by a relatively new publisher founded in 2017 with a rather intriguing list, this…
November 26, 2020 Work: A History of How We Spend our Time by James Suzman Reviewed by Liz Dexter I will say right away that this is probably not the book you think it will be. The subtitle suggests…
November 12, 2020 The Secret Life of Books: Why They Mean More than Words by Tom Mole Paperback review by Liz Dexter Tom Mole, as Professor of English Literature and Book History at the University of Edinburgh, is certainly qualified to…
