More from Books
Under a green sea
How, between 1911 and 1917, Owen became the dazzling poet we know and love is the story told in Jane Potter’s new edition of his selected letters
Bizarre miniatures
With flying narrators and women whose hair drags on the floor, there’s something of Leonora Carrington’s weird visions about Williams’s short stories
The sound of the underground
In his history of dance music in modern Britain, Ed Gillett describes police kettling at raves from the 1990s onwards and the attempt by parliament to ban repetitive beats
Constantly frit
Catherine Taylor describes her anxiety growing up in Sheffield against an ‘uneasy backdrop’ of picketing miners, the Hillsborough disaster and a serial killer on the loose
Sinister siblings
A brother and sister are dispatched to a relative’s farm in Colorado, and grow up isolated, unfeeling and even estranged from each other
Worthless pieces of paper
The first banknotes were greeted with deep suspicion in 1769 – but it was nothing to the distrust that Soviet and post-Soviet issues aroused
Centuries of martyrs
There is no redemption in this account of the birth of Latin Christendom, with ‘heretics’ suffering cruelly for the beliefs, just as Christian martyrs had under the Romans
The perils of permissiveness
The erotic adventures of a teenager who finally meets her match became a succès de scandale in 1920, and will still raise eyebrows today
Bold, brave and determined
Andrew Harding describes the hastily assembled ‘Dad’s Army’ – and formidable babushka – who sensationally resisted the Russian advance on Voznesensk last year
Beware of pity
In her powerful memoir-cum-manifesto, Selina Mills tells us what she misses most, what irritates her most and why she won’t have a guide dog
City of contradictions
Before the Troubles hijacked its reputation, the city was renowned for its linen industry and great shipyards, responsible for an eighth of the global shipbuilding trade
Glamour and grime
Of the Stones’ talented wives and girlfriends, Anita Pallenberg contributed most, dictating the band’s style and even how they should remix tracks
A dangerous Christ-complex
His fateful intransigence over the negotiations has been variously ascribed to a Christ-complex, an unhappy childhood and even latent homosexuality
Tales to tell
Despite the seediness and threat of violence, Littlehampton was a place of neighbourly camaraderie, fondly evoked in Sally Bayley’s latest memoir
Man for hire
Shoji Morimoto offers himself to strangers in Tokyo to queue on their behalf, make a fuss of their dogs or simply provide a human presence
Private obsessions
A world of private fetishes, obsessions, childhood memories and literary passions is dazzlingly revealed in 13 short stories
The glory of Jamaican music
Abandoned in infancy, Alex Wheatle grew up in children’s homes, but found salvation in roots reggae – and, eventually, his father in Jamaica
The trouble with mothers
Simpson writes from personal experience in this moving story of three children’s commitment to their mentally ill mother
Tabloid fever
A tabloid journalist desperate for a scoop pursues a young Irish mother whose daughter is rumoured to have killed a child. But is there any truth in the story?
Travellers’ tales
In the absence of their own written records, they have been ‘invented’ and misrepresented in Europe ever since their arrival in the Middle Ages, says Klaus-Michael Bogdal
The work that’s never done
Like many women in mid-life, Marina Benjamin found herself caring for the very young and the elderly – leading her to ‘a radical feminist turn’
Ancient stalemate
History is always relevant, says Adrian Goldsworthy – and Rome’s long war with Parthia-Persia, ending in deadlock, should make Putin wary
Terrorist friends and relatives
When a Sri Lankan medical student finds her brothers joining the Tamil Tigers, she is caught in a tangle of commitments to family, friends, homeland and vocation
A burning issue
Food and fashion are the chief culprits, with too much organic waste going to landfill, and 10-15 per cent of new clothing routinely incinerated as ‘deadstock’
The woman who would be king
Describing the golden age of ancient Egypt, John Romer pays tribute to the chief wife of Thutmose II who proclaimed herself king and ruled successfully for almost 20 years
