book reviews and features

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support

Tom Birchenough Friday, 14 November 2025

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Justin Lewis: Into the Groove review - fun and fact-filled trip through Eighties pop

Bernard Hughes Thursday, 02 October 2025

Into the Groove is Justin Lewis’s follow-up to 2023’s Don’t Stop the Music, in which he traced 40 years of pop history by offering bite-sized facts for every day from January 1...

Joanna Pocock: Greyhound review - on the road again

Claudia Bull Friday, 26 September 2025

Joanna Pocock’s second full-length book, Greyhound, tells the story of a single journey made and remade. In 2006, after the death of her sister and several miscarriages, Pocock travelled...

Mark Hussey: Mrs Dalloway - Biography of a Novel review - echoes across crises

Helen Tyson Tuesday, 23 September 2025

Writing in her diary just over 100 years ago on 19^th June 1923, Virginia Woolf wrote: “In this book I...

Frances Wilson: Electric Spark - The Enigma of Muriel Spark review - the matter of fact

Claudia Bull Tuesday, 16 September 2025

How do you tell the story of a person’s mind? In the preface to Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, published this year by Bloomsbury, Frances Wilson points out that biography was...

Elizabeth Alker: Everything We Do is Music review - Prokofiev goes pop

Jon Turney Wednesday, 27 August 2025

Composers and musicians explore acoustic space. Generally, they have got by with...

Natalia Ginzburg: The City and the House review - a dying art

Hugh Barnes Saturday, 02 August 2025

Many readers and writers think of epistolary novels as old-fashioned, just as letter writing itself can seem a bit quaint nowadays. The genre became popular during the 18^th and 19^...

Tom Raworth: Cancer review - truthfulness

Jack Barron Friday, 04 July 2025

I recently heard a BBC Radio 4 presenter use the troubling phrase: "Not everyone agreed on the reality of that." Once the domain of Andre Breton’s Manifeste du surréalisme, such...

Ian Leslie: John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs review - help!

John Carvill Wednesday, 25 June 2025

Do we need any more Beatles books? The answer is: that’s the wrong question. What we need is more Beatles books that are worth reading. As the musician and music historian Bob Stanley pointed out...

Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages

Jon Turney Wednesday, 11 June 2025

The slightly overwrought subtitle, "How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World and Shapes Our Future", gives a good indication how computer enthusiast Sam Arbesman...

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