MEMOIR THE COLOUR OF THE SKY AFTER RAIN by Tessa Keswick (Head of Zeus £30, 384 pp) When King George III’s ambassador was trying to negotiate a trade deal in China in 1793, he decided to curry favour with the Emperor by presenting him with a carriage which, thanks to advanced British engineering, was the … Read more
PSYCHO THRILLERS By Christena Appleyard for the Daily Mail Published: 22:04 GMT, 16 January 2020 | Updated: 16:50 GMT, 17 January 2020 THE WOODS by Vanessa Savage (Sphere £16.99, 400 pp) THE WOODS by Vanessa Savage (Sphere £16.99, 400 pp) There is a cool directness about Savage’s writing that is making her name in a … Read more
WHAT BOOK would Wilbur Smith take to a desert island? Wilbur Smith revealed that he’s currently reading The Egyptian by Mika Waltari He would take My African Journey by Winston Churchill to a desert island He said King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard gave him the reading bug By Daily Mail Reporter Published: 22:09 … Read more
MEMOIR MOTHERWELL: A GIRLHOOD by Deborah Orr (Weidenfeld £16.99, 304 pp) Deborah Orr, a leading Fleet Street columnist who died of breast cancer last October aged 57, has left behind this memoir of growing up in Lanarkshire that is searing, candid, magnificently perceptive and lingeringly tragic — tragic because the story is full of conflict, … Read more
PICTURE THIS By Gerry Fallon For The Daily Mail Published: 22:11 GMT, 23 January 2020 | Updated: 22:40 GMT, 23 January 2020 DEGAS AT THE OPERA by Henri Loyrette (Thames & Hudson £45, 320 pp) DEGAS AT THE OPERA by Henri Loyrette (Thames & Hudson £45, 320 pp) Edgar Degas, lover of ballet and famed … Read more
BIG SKY by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan £8.99, 512 pp) BIG SKY by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan £8.99, 512 pp) For many years, Jackson Brodie has dreamed of returning to his Yorkshire roots, and in the fifth of Kate Atkinson’s novels about the policeman turned private detective, his wish has been granted. He’s renting a … Read more
BOOK OF THE WEEK VICTORY IN THE KITCHEN by Annie Gray (Profile £16.99, 400 pp) A crowd of 20,000 jubilant people gathered to hear Winston Churchill give a victory speech on VE Day in May 1945. Just before he stepped outside to address the throng, the Prime Minister went over to a woman standing quietly … Read more
HISTORY NUKING THE MOON by Vince Houghton (Profile £9.99, 304 pp) Conspiracy or cock-up? I have long subscribed to the cock-up theory of human disaster myself, because I believe more in things going wrong than going very, very right. Vince Houghton, though, believes in both. He’s very interested in conspiracies, but only in the ones … Read more
LITERARY FICTION By Claire Allfree For The Daily Mail Published: 22:10 GMT, 23 January 2020 | Updated: 23:12 GMT, 23 January 2020 THE ISLAND CHILD by Molly Aitken (Canongate £14.99, 320 pp) Superstition and Catholicism sit in uneasy alliance on the weather-battered Irish island where Oona is growing up, her every move watched over by … Read more
A second sweeping and ambitious novel from the talented Australian Hammer, whose debut, Scrublands, last year won a string of literary prize nominations.