Book Reviews

Carlos Ruiz Zafón The Shadow of the Wind “Once, in my father’s bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into [...]

Katherine Mansfield Selected Stories, 2002, Oxford World’s Classics ISBN 978-0-19-953735-8 Mansfield’s Selected Stories brings together her finest work; from early stories inspired by her time in [...]

Robert Harris Hutchinson 2020, ISBN: 978-1-786-33140-3 Published in July 2020, this book was, Harris says, largely written in lockdown.  He describes attempts by the British to hamper the [...]

In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar As we are currently unable to travel, I have made it my project to read a novel from every country in the world – although I do rather hope that the [...]

Malcolm Vale’s contribution to the debate on the origins of the Hundred Years War – The Origins of the Hundred Years War: The Angevin Legacy 1250-1340 – as the title would suggest, [...]

Sarah Waters – Tipping the Velvet Review As “one of the best storytellers alive today” (Independent, n.d.), Waters’s writings are confident, precise and sensuous with irony and wit [...]

The Domestic Manners of the Americans by Frances (Fanny) Trollope 1832 On a mahogany bookshelf in the lower Birmingham Library sit two elegantly bound volumes whichcreated a sensation and earned [...]

The Scheme for Full Employment by Magnus Mills 2002 I was first intrigued by the books of Magnus Mills when I read The Maintenance of Headway andhe explained in great detail the answer to that [...]

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali 2007 At a time when blasphemy laws in Islam and the curtailing of free speech are once again in thenews this autobiography of a Somali immigrant who renounced Islam and [...]

A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes 1957 Chester Himes writes Chandleresque thrillers whose heroes are tough black detectives: Coffin EdJohnson and Grave Digger Jones, Violent, surreal, fast paced [...]