MUST READS  | Daily Mail Online

RAKE’S PROGRESS

by Rachel Johnson (Simon and Schuster £8.99, 272 pp)

Like many posh families, the Johnson clan are keen on nicknames. Rachel Johnson prefaces this rollicking account of her 2019 battle to become an MEP for the Change UK party with a note on nomenclature. Her brother, the Prime Minister, is known as Boris, but his family calls him Al.

Rachel’s family moniker is ‘Rake’ — hence her book’s title. That cleared up, we are off at a cracking pace, following the series of apparently haphazard events by which Rachel, a fervent Remainer, became a candidate for a party whose lifespan was fleetingly short.

Indiscretion is the lifeblood of this hilarious romp, whose clangorous name-dropping makes Sasha Swire’s diaries sound almost reticent.

PRINCE ALBERT

by A.N. Wilson (Atlantic Books £10.99, 448 pp)

It is the fate of a Royal husband or wife always to live in the shadow of their spouse, and A.N. Wilson’s brilliant biography of Prince Albert reveals the innumerable frustrations of his role as Queen Victoria’s consort.

Albert’s death at the age of 42, in 1861, left his grieving widow decades in which to mythologise her adored husband. Wilson’s account of the couple’s relationship is much less sugary.

‘By the time [Victoria and Albert] had been married 12 or 13 years … the love affair punctuated by storms was now an everlasting battle punctuated by moments of relative calm.’

Yet his book’s subtitle, The Man Who Saved The Monarchy, celebrates Albert’s many virtues.

He brought to the thankless role of Royal consort intelligence, hard work and a progressive outlook that laid the foundations of the modern monarchy.

SHADOWPLAY

by Joseph O’Connor (Vintage £8.99, 432 pp)

Bram Stoker is best known as the author of Dracula But, before writing it, he worked with actor Henry Irving, and his leading lady, Ellen Terry, during his 27 years as the manager of Irving’s Lyceum Theatre in London.

O’Connor’s novel begins in 1908, four years before Stoker’s death, as he sends his diaries to Ellen.

The turbulent life story the diaries record is haunted by the figure of Dracula, as Stoker’s bloodsucking anti-hero takes shape in his mind.

Teasing hints of the future masterpiece abound: his young assistant at the Lyceum is called Jonathan Harker.

An ambitious celebration of friendship, theatre and the power of darkness, Shadowplay is chilling and dramatic in equal measure.