April 9, 2020 A Bite of the Apple by Lennie Goodings Review by Simon There’s a certain variety of person who can always spot a bottle-green spine at a hundred paces, and has faced the…
February 18, 2020 My Caravaggio Style by Doris Langley Moore Review by Simon It’s always exciting when Dean Street Press announce the next batch of novels in their Furrowed Middlebrow series, chosen by Scott…
October 1, 2019 Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell Review by Simon As the cover of Confessions of a Bookseller tells us, Bythell is an international bestseller. A couple of years ago, The…
September 5, 2019 The Remarkable Life of the Skin by Monty Lyman Review by Simon. The number of science books I’ve read can be numbered on my fingers, and number of science books I’ve read that weren’t written…
March 7, 2019 Alice by Elizabeth Eliot Reviewed by Simon Hurrah to Dean Street Press and their continued Furrowed Middlebrow series, bringing back underrated women writers that most of us haven’t…
December 13, 2018 Little by Edward Carey Reviewed by Simon The name Madame Tussaud is familiar to most of us – particularly to anybody who has been a tourist in London,…
May 17, 2018 Review of The Akeing Heart by Peter Haring Judd Review by Simon How you approach The Akeing Heart will depend largely on how familiar you are with the names Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine…
October 6, 2017 The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell Reviewed by Simon Thomas Many book lovers have fantasies about what it would be like to work in a bookshop – perhaps particularly a…
April 25, 2017 Tom Tiddler’s Ground by Ursula Orange Reviewed by Simon One of the authors I’ve been on the look-out for, for years, is Ursula Orange – entirely the responsibility of Scott…
December 13, 2016 Evenfield by Rachel Ferguson Review by Simon The launch of the Furrowed Middlebrow series from Dean Street Press, under the editorial eye of blogger and middlebrow expert Scott…
December 9, 2016 Terms and Conditions by Ysenda Maxtone Graham Review by Simon Slightly Foxed are beloved for their reprints of memoirs from across the twentieth century, but they also have published a handful…
June 16, 2016 The Lost Europeans by Emanuel Litvinoff Reviewed by Simon Have you ever had the experience of starting a novel and, before you’ve got to the end of the second page,…
July 30, 2015 London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes Reviewed by Simon There are plenty of books about World War Two. There are even plenty of diaries, and some – like Nella Last’s or Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg’s –…
July 9, 2015 Life Among the Savages & Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson Reviewed by Simon I already knew that I loved Shirley Jackson – I did from the time I was about a chapter into We Have…
April 9, 2015 Researching ‘A Curious Friendship, by Anna Thomasson I first came across Rex Whistler some years ago at Plas Newydd on Anglesey. There he had painted his largest and most famous mural,…
April 9, 2015 A Curious Friendship by Anna Thomasson Reviewed by Simon The subtitle of Anna Thomasson’s biography, A Curious Friendship: the Story of a Bluestocking and a Bright Young Thing, belies the publisher’s…
January 27, 2015 Five Fascinating Facts About… Virginia Woolf Written by Simon Thomas We’re featuring a few Virginia Woolf titles in this issue, so it seemed a good time to turn attention to…
January 27, 2015 A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf Reviewed by Simon There are plenty of copies of Virginia Woolf’s famous feminist essay A Room of One’s Own available, new and second hand, but I…
January 20, 2015 Essays on the Self by Virginia Woolf Reviewed by Simon I should hang my colours to the mast from the outset: for my money, Virginia Woolf is the greatest writer of…
July 10, 2014 Charlotte Mew and Her Friends by Penelope Fitzgerald Reviewed by Simon Thomas I’m going to be honest, when I picked up a biography a little-known turn-of-the-century poet, I wasn’t expecting it to be…
April 10, 2014 Q&A with Helen Oyeyemi, author of Boy, Snow, Bird Questions by Simon 1) Firstly, congrats on Boy, Snow, Bird, it’s fantastic! Could you say a bit about the genesis of the novel and…
April 10, 2014 Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi Reviewed by Simon Thomas At some point, Helen Oyeyemi will stop being notable for her youth – but, at 29 and with five novels…
