Hubert Mingarelli was a brilliant writer of short fiction and this is the third novel of his I read this year. His previous books, set during the Russian Civil War and the Second World War,…Read more…

Dave Asprey is famous (in some circles) as the guy who invented Bulletproof Coffee, which is both a concept and a business. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Asprey seems to be one of the first…Read more…

The problem with seeing Leopoldstadt – Tom Stoppard’s most recent and probably last play – is that so much is going on, there are so many characters on stage all at once, so many…Read more…

The problem with seeing Leopoldstadt – Tom Stoppard’s most recent and probably last play – is that so much is going on, there are so many characters on stage all at once, so many…Read more…

There are literally thousands of books about Churchill. Erik Larson’s unique selling point seems to be his focus on Churchill’s family life, and in particular his weekends away from…Read more…

Mark Billingham has earned his reputation as one of Britain’s best crime writers due to his series featuring Tom Thorne, a detective serving with the Metropolitan Police. From time to time, he…Read more…

Gabriel Allon has gotten older since the last time I read a Daniel Silva novel. The legendary art restorer / assassin is now the head of the Mossad (not called the Mossad in the book)…Read more…

Jay Lovestone, who is largely forgotten today, led an extraordinary life – much of it in the shadows. He was one of the founders of the Communist Party in the US, and rose to become…Read more…

Mermaids are lovely, aren’t they? I’m thinking the 1989 Walt Disney cartoon or Daryl Hannah in the 1984 comedy ‘Splash’. Well, Mira Grant, the author of staggering number of…Read more…

First of all, they don’t. It’s a provocative title for a book, but ultimately a silly one — and it’s not what the book is really about. John Kampfner offers a wide-ranging…Read more…

This is the second book I’ve read by this Icelandic author, the first being Moonstone: The boy who never was (2016). These are both very short books (novellas, actually) and both tell the…Read more…

As I write this, Atomic Habits has spent 85 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list in the category ‘Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous’. This is extraordinary, and out of curiosity I…Read more…

Ben Macintyre is a great storyteller, but to be fair, this is a great story just waiting to be told. Kim Philby is certainly a contender for the title of ‘most successful spy of all…Read more…

Three German soldiers — all middle-aged reservists — set out from their base in occupied Poland during the Second World War. Their job is to capture a Jew, any Jew, and return him to…Read more…

Thomas Frank is best known as the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?, which was a brilliant analysis of why working class people in America — and not only in Kansas — so…Read more…

Andy Weir’s first published book, The Martian, was a sensation – and rightly so. For me, it reawakened an interest in science fiction. His second book, Artemis, sold well but had mixed…Read more…

Robert Harris is back. Having made his reputation with Second World War thrillers such as Enigma and Fatherland, Harris is on familiar territory here and knows how to tell a good story. I read the…Read more…

I first came across Tim Wohlforth probably around half a century ago. A couple of members of his group stood outside the gates of my high school in Queens, New York. They were chatting with…Read more…

Derek Gow has campaigned for years to reintroduce beavers into Britain. The animals were hunted to extinction centuries ago, and the case for reintroducing them is a compelling one. Basically,…Read more…

In the afterword to this book, author David F. Walker provides a rather nuanced view of the Black Panthers, and correctly sums it all up by saying that the conditions that gave birth to the…Read more…