December 16, 2020 The Story of Keth by Blanche Girouard Reviewed by Rob Spence Blanche Girouard, born in 1898, was a prominent figure in the Anglo-Irish aristocracy of the early twentieth century. Her father…
December 9, 2020 Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel, by Rachel Holmes Reviewed by Rob Spence I recently watched the Ethiopia episode of Afua Hirsch’s excellent series African Renaissance, in which I was startled to see…
July 21, 2020 My Summer Reading: Gawain and The Green Knight – Michael Smith Members of the Shiny reviewing team share previously published books from their shelves that they’re reading now… Review by Rob Spence Readers of Shiny…
June 25, 2020 Westwind by Ian Rankin Paperback review by Rob Spence It comes as a bit of a shock to realise that Ian Rankin has now published well over thirty…
June 16, 2020 James and Nora: A Portrait of a Marriage by Edna O’Brien Review by Rob Spence Last year, Weidenfeld and Nicholson reissued Edna O’Brien’s 1999 biography of Joyce, an entertainingly idiosyncratic volume, which is reviewed here….
June 11, 2020 Victory For The Slain by Hugh Lofting Review by Rob Spence When we think of First World War poets, it’s safe to say that Hugh Lofting will not be the first…
March 31, 2020 A Little History of Poetry by John Carey Review by Rob Spence In 1935, the doyen of art critics, Ernst Gombrich, was a young, unemployed former student with a PhD in art…
March 17, 2020 James Joyce by Edna O’Brien Review by Rob Spence Edna O’Brien’s position as one of the most significant modern Irish writers is undisputed, and here, in this reissue of…
January 28, 2020 So Brightly at the Last by Ian Shircore Review by Rob Spence In one important respect, this book was outdated at the moment it was published: its subject, Clive James, having endured…
September 17, 2019 Moonlighting: Beethoven and Literary Modernism, by Nathan Waddell Review by Rob Spence When the newly-elected Brexit party MEPs took their place at the European Parliament in June, they used the opening ceremony…
June 6, 2019 We, The Survivors by Tash Aw Review by Rob Spence Malaysian novelist Tash Aw’s fourth novel marks a departure in style for him. Rather than the broad canvas he presented…
May 14, 2019 The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin, by Geoffrey Hill Edited by Kenneth Haynes Reviewed by Rob Spence When Geoffrey Hill died in 2016, his monumental Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952 -2012 was still fresh, its astonishing…
April 2, 2019 Walter Gropius: Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus by Fiona MacCarthy Review by Rob Spence It probably doesn’t occur to many people as they struggle to fix bolt B to batten F of the Ikea…
March 14, 2019 The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo Review by Rob Spence English-language fiction set in colonial Malaya tended in the past to focus on the lives of the Empire types who…
March 5, 2019 Winterman by Alex Walters Review by Rob Spence East Anglia has quite a lot of previous when it comes to crime fiction: Colin Watson’s chronicles of Flaxborough, James…
February 26, 2019 To Kill the Truth by Sam Bourne Review by Rob Spence We live in an age of fake news, propagated by politicians, celebrities and media organisations. Perhaps we always have –…
February 19, 2019 The Photographer at Sixteen by George Szirtes Review by Rob Spence This remarkably compelling memoir is, surprisingly, the first prose publication of George Szirtes, one of our most distinguished poets. At…
December 6, 2018 Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: the Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce by Colm Tóibín Review by Rob Spence Tóibín’s title, of course, comes from Lady Caroline Lamb’s snap judgement of Byron; it’s not clear whether the author here…
November 6, 2018 The Flame by Leonard Cohen Edited by Robert Faggen & Alexandra Pleshoyano Review by Rob Spence For a while in the mid sixties to the early seventies, the singer-songwriter…
October 25, 2018 Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami Translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen Review by Rob Spence The strap line chosen by the publishers for the cover of this massive…
July 17, 2018 Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahnuik Review by Rob Spence I began reading this book just as the outcry over the Trump regime’s treatment of migrants was gathering pace. It…
February 22, 2018 Felix Culpa by Jeremy Gavron Review by Rob Spence The German artist Kurt Schwitters developed a method , which he called “Merz” by which his canvases would be constructed…
November 30, 2017 Friend of My Youth by Amit Chaudhuri Reviewed by Rob Spence I read most of this novel on a plane, and it struck me that it was appropriate to consume it…
August 3, 2017 Anthony Burgess Centenary – a Reading List By Rob Spence Anthony Burgess, whose centenary is celebrated this year, remarked ruefully on more than one occasion that he produced as many novels…
April 25, 2017 David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet by Thomas Dilworth Review by Rob Spence Ask a reasonably well-educated person to name some Anglophone modernist poets, and you are sure to hear the names of…
