sat 19/07/2025

book reviews and features

Selina Todd: Tastes of Honey review – Salford dreams of freedom

Boyd Tonkin

In the late 1950s, a photo technician from Salford suddenly became “the most famous teenager in Britain”. Shelagh Delaney was 19 when she sent the script of A Taste of Honey to the...

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Karl Marlantes: Deep River review - growing pains of a nation of immigrants

India Lewis

Karl Marlantes’s Deep River is an all-American novel. And why should it not be? Marlantes is an all-American...

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Niall Griffiths: Broken Ghost review - Welsh visions of hope and loss

Boyd Tonkin

The trend-hopping taste-makers who run British literary publishing have lately decided that “working-class” writing merits a small dole of their precious time and cash. To assess how long this...

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Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World ed. Zahra Hankir review – journalism from the front lines

Sarah Collins

Many of the women in this pioneering collection of essays have faced unimaginable hardship in their pursuit of...

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The Collection: Nina Leger trans. Laura Francis - daring, direct and richly imagined

Jessica Payn

Jeanne – employment, age and appearance unknown, motives unknowable – is building a collection of penises. In street after street, she feigns dizziness; on the inevitable approach of a man eager...

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Rachel DeLoache Williams: My Friend Anna review - a fraudster for the Instagram age?

Florence Hallett

Of all the ventures that super-fraudster Anna Delvey might have chosen as bait for her victims, an exclusive...

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Martin Hägglund: This Life - Why Mortality Makes Us Free review - profound book to be read slowly

Marina Vaizey

Swedish-born multi-lingual academic Martin Hägglund lives in New York and teaches philosophy and comparative literature at Yale. His new book, This Life, is a substantial examination of secular...

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Vic Marks: Original Spin review - trouble in Taunton

Peter Quantrill

In cricket, timing is everything. Played a fraction early and that silky cover drive finds a batsman out to lunch as...

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Gina Apostol: Insurrecto review – a treacherous archipelago of stories

Boyd Tonkin

As in other countries born out of 19th-century uprisings against imperial power, the literary roots of the Philippines run deep. Executed by the Spanish in 1896, the novelist, poet and physician...

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CD - The Lost Words: Spell Songs

Tim Cumming

Earlier this year, eight musicians – Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever...

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