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 round-up
Reviews of The Oxford Brotherhood by Guillermo Martinez, Repentance by Eloisa Diaz, Powder Smoke by Andrew Martin and Shadow of a Doubt by Michelle Davies
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
IN THE OXFORD BROTHERHOOD by Guillermo Martinez (Little Brown, £16.99) “G,” an Argentinian mathematics student in Oxford in 1994, is drawn into a deadly mystery through his mentor’s involvement in an academic society of Lewis Carroll admirers.
A young researcher claims to have made an astonishing discovery concerning one of the great mysteries of Carroll’s life. It’s the question which has overshadowed study of the author of the Alice books since the 1950s — the nature of his relationship with little girls, which to modern sensibilities is highly troubling.
When the researcher almost dies in a suspicious accident, G must uncover the truth of puzzles old and new to prevent further bloodshed.
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MAT COWARD picks the jewels, new and old, from the endless crime scenes of fiction