MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long

I’M NOT sure the Guild of Literary Critics include it in their list of approved descriptions, but really, “gorgeous” is the only word that makes sense of Alan Moore’s The Great When (Bloomsbury, £20).
It’s one of those lavish cakes of a book which is so full of plums — hilarious and horrific, touching and obscene, surreal and familiar — that you can’t help gorging yourself on it.
It belongs to the small but much-loved subgenre of “hidden London” fantasies, in which another version of the city overlaps or intersects with the one we know.

Doomed adolescents, when the missing person is you, classic whodunnit, and an anti-capitalist eco-thriller

MAT COWARD sings the praises of the Giant Winter’s full-depth, earthy and ferrous flavour perfect for rich meals in the dark months

The heroism of the jury who defied prison and starvation conditions secured the absolute right of juries to deliver verdicts based on conscience — a convention which is now under attack, writes MAT COWARD

As apple trees blossom to excess it remains to be seen if an abundance of fruit will follow. MAT COWARD has a few tips to see you through a nervy time