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Tag: Reviewer: Spence R

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Review by Rob Spence In one important respect, this book was outdated at the moment it was published: its subject, Clive James, having endured…

moonlighting nathan waddell
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…

baruch gnostic
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…

Walter Gropius: Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus by Fiona MacCarthy
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…

Night Tiger Yangsze Choo
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…

Winterman alex walters
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…

To kill the truth sam bourne
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 –…

The Photographer at Sixteen by George Szirtes
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…

Mad-Bad-Dangerous-to-Know-the-Fathers-of-Wilde-Yeats-and-Joyce-by-Colm-Tóibín
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…

The Flame by Leonard Cohen
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…

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami
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…

Friend of My Youth by Amit Chaudhuri
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…

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