GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
Crime fiction
New books from Oscar de Muriel, Louise Penny and Amer Anwar
'OWNING' ASIAN WEST LONDON: Amer Anwar
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
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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RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis