From Gordon Brown to Natalie Haynes: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Family Meal by Bryan Washington and Pure Wit by Francesca Peacock.
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Book of the Day
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Book of the Day
Anne Boleyn’s blunders
A new history shows how the clever, ambitious queen was no match for the post-truth politics of Henry VIII’s court.
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Myths of the miners’ strike
An oral history of the bitter Eighties dispute reveals a conflict that went far deeper than just government vs trade…
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Requiem for a world war
Jeremy Eichler’s Time’s Echo shows how four great 20th-century composers captured the horrors of conflict.
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Who owns your face?
How the shadowy start-up Clearview sold the power of facial recognition to corporations and states across the globe.
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How England lost the Hundred Years War
The final part of Jonathan Sumption’s epic history reveals the complacency that led to the end of English power in…
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Who makes history?
A study of postwar British politics overstates the influence of its leading personalities.
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Bernie Taupin: good lyricist, bad writer
The songs he wrote with Elton John may be works of art. His bloated memoir is not.
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Elon Musk’s death drive
The tech billionaire built a world that he could rule – then allowed it to destroy him.
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Natasha Walter’s radical inheritance
A daughter’s homage to the mother who had to negotiate family and the urge to activism.
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From Clive Myrie to Danny Cipriani: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring The View From Down Here by Lucy Webster and So To Speak by Terrance Hayes.
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Richard Osman’s bland Britain
How did the TV presenter’s terminally twee stories of death and Waitrose become the bestselling novels in the UK?
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How to build a dictionary
A new book identifies the army of amateurs, eccentrics and criminals who created the Oxford English Dictionary.
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The strange rebirth of Sinn Féin
Under Mary Lou McDonald the party is on the path to power – but can she keep its uneasy alliance…
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Hobbes was wrong
John Gray’s latest book argues that the new Leviathans of liberalism have led to a war of all against all.
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From Yiyun Li to Wolfram Eilenberger: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Kenneth W Harl’s history of nomadic tribes and Redstone Press’s Seeing Things.
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Homer’s history of violence
Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad reveals a bleak vision of the self-interest and savagery of humankind.
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Anne Enright’s damaged lives
In The Wren, The Wren, the Irish author rigorously traces the line between love and trauma.
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Still fighting the history wars
Debates about Britain’s colonial legacy are not just a product of Brexit or woke politics – empire has always been…
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The cruelty of cricket
Nick Compton had talent and a famous name, but the unforgiving sport both hid and exacerbated his insecurities.
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