“Where is the land which has neither arms, money, care, physic, politics, nor taxes?” asked Lachlan Maclean in 1838; “that land is St Kilda”. Whether socialist, anarchist, noble savage, or beggar, the natives of this most remote Hebridean archipelago have almost invariably been ill-represented in literature, cast variously as semi-mystical beings or as peoples uncorrupted Read More
There is a quiet, yet brutal authority to David Harsent’s latest collection, although to categorise the book as mere poetry might do the collection and the writer a considerable disservice. Fire Songs stands alone as a unique beast, which harks back to the verse masters of the past; it is even reminiscent of Milton’s later works. Stealthily, the poet Read More
Ruth Padel’s latest collection, shortlisted for the Eliot Prize, Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth is a book “of the book” in that it draws on narratives from Christianity, Islam and Judaism to comment on our “crossing this desert of life” (“Extract from the Travels of Ibn Jubayr”). The poems are finely wrought pieces Read More
A little passage in Albert Camus’ The Plague has always haunted me. It concerns the difficulty of conveying grief in the very personal way that loss is felt and mourned. In these circumstances, words fall short so that “the current coin of language”, the “commonplaces” and “set phrases of ordinary conversation” must suffice, and failing Read More
Mary Costello’s debut novel Academy Street is an excellent follow up to her acclaimed collection of short stories, The China Factory, in 2012. The novel details the quiet and somewhat unremarkable life of Tess Lohan, beginning in 1940’s rural Ireland and expanding to the bustle of New York later, spanning seven decades in total. From Read More
Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk is no ordinary memoir. But then buying a goshawk as a fledgling, raising it in a front room and training it to hunt wild game is no ordinary pastime. Part grief memoir, part nature study, part biography of the writer T.H.White, the book cannot be classified into any one Read More
Trinidadian-born author Monique Roffey’s fourth novel, House of Ashes, is a fictionalised retelling of a botched 1990 coup attempt by Muslim organisation Jamaat al Muslimeen. The event is largely forgotten, even unknown, outside of the island of Roffey’s birth. However, in its exploration of how and why the disaffected become radicalised, it is not difficult Read More
Jonathan Edwards’ collection of amusing and accessibly candid poems, My Family and Other Superheroes, recognises that costumes, masks and neatly folding personas belong to the everyday. These are artificial means of separation between self and profession, past and present, family and nation. Most successfully perhaps Edwards plunders the modern high street, a place replete with Read More
“Roy Jenkins was probably the best Prime Minister Britain never had”, contends John Campbell in his recent biography of the erstwhile Labour statesman, Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life. With a half-century parliamentary span, matched only by William Gladstone and Winston Churchill, Campbell evokes a career which left an indelible mark on British politics, equalled by Read More
Emma Healey’s debut novel is a Christmas cake of a treat: a rich mix of detective, mystery, thriller, which gives an insightful rendition of the workings of a mind taken over by dementia and the effects of the condition on others. The imagery throughout is cleverly worked into the narrative, linking the vital elements of Read More