STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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Crime fiction
New books from Oscar de Muriel, Louise Penny and Amer Anwar
'OWNING' ASIAN WEST LONDON: Amer Anwar
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
THE DANCE OF THE SERPENTS by Oscar de Muriel (Orion, £18.99) chronicles the further adventures of the two Victorian detectives who comprise the Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly, a clandestine unit within the Edinburgh constabulary.
A sceptic and a believer, they are English toff Inspector Frey and his hard-as-girders Scots colleague, Inspector Nine-Nails McGray.
In this episode, they are commissioned, very much against their will and with threats hanging over their heads, to serve the hated prime minister Lord Salisbury. He needs their help in tracking down a long-lived criminal conspiracy of self-styled witches who have a mysterious hold over the increasingly erratic and bloated Queen Victoria.
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