Calt is an academic and an expert on the history, culture and language of The Blues – the black American music of the first half of the 20th century. After an introduction setting out his purpose and intentions for the … Continue reading →
“A rock and roll life” it says on the cover. That’s a bit punchier than “sex, drugs and close-harmony falsetto”, though the longer version is probably a better summary as there’s a lot of all three in the book. This … Continue reading →
Dr Hilary Hamnett is a forensic toxicologist and Associate Professor of Forensic Science at the University of Lincoln, UK. In this book she reviews a number of fictional stories involving poisoning, including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Casino Royale, The Count … Continue reading →
Set in the time of the Great Depression in 1930s America this book tells the story of the Dunne family and their neighbours. They, like many others, had been tempted to move west to farm in Oklahoma only to struggle … Continue reading →
This is a nice little* book. I felt the blurb on the back says everything I wanted to say about it. Packed with surprising facts, this delightful and gorgeously designed book will beguile anyone who is curious about weather. Expertly … Continue reading →
The story is set in Iceland but could have been set anywhere – only the names of the characters and places show the connection. The book feels like it was written to be adapted for a TV series. It gets … Continue reading →
These are the first two books of Pullman’s second trilogy about Lyra, the mysterious substance called ‘Dust’ and the attempts of the powerful and sinister Magisterium to suppress all knowledge of it. The third book hasn’t yet been published. The … Continue reading →
Written in the wake of an outbreak of statue-toppling driven in part by the death of George Floyd in 2020 and the spread of the Black Lives Matter movement, historian Alex von Tunzelmann (‘AvT’) presents case studies of 12 examples … Continue reading →
The author is a long-term staff writer for ‘New Yorker’ magazine who lives outside the city on the banks of the Hudson river. In 2014 he happened to meet a stranger, a big grizzled man wearing “denim overalls, a faded … Continue reading →
After I found the second book in this series a bit disappointing (see ‘Dead Lions’) I was slow getting round to reading the next ones. Happily, ‘Real Tigers’ and then ‘Spook Street’ lived up to the promise of the original … Continue reading →