BooksPodcast

Nicholas Wapshott – W. w. Norton – £22.95 Not many academic economists are household names. But when I was young, Milton Friedman was. The high-priest of Monetarism and intellectual descendant of Friedrich Hayek, his theories were much admired by right-wing … Continue reading →

Robb Johnson – PM Books – £17.99

Alwyn Turner – Profile Books – £20

Adrian MacKinder – Pen & Sword White Owl    £19.99        $29.99 Face Front, True Believers! This is the story of the man who gave the world the Marvel Universe, who bestrode the comic-book industry like a colossus, and who said “Face … Continue reading →

Paul Theroux – Hamish Hamilton – £20.95 Long before he was the father of Louis Theroux, Paul Theroux was a distinguished and prolific travel writer and novelist. Born in 1941 (and we are delighted to note he is still with … Continue reading →

Philip Norman – Weidenfeld and Nicolson – £20 It is generally accepted that Jimi Hendrix is the most important guitarist in the history of rock music. In just four years he revolutionised everybody’s idea of what an electric guitar was … Continue reading →

Larry Watson – Algonquin Books  £21.99   $27.95 The Lives of Edie Pritchard is Larry Watson’s eleventh novel, and he is at the height of his powers. It is a big novel set in Larry’s back yard of the states where … Continue reading →

Liz Williams – Reaktion Books – £15.95 In her discussion of Stonehenge, Liz Williams writes: “There is a legend that Merlin simply flew the entire circle from Ireland, which I think we can rule out.” This is typical of her … Continue reading →

Chris Kirkham – Wallace Publishing – £8.99 You have to salute a debut novel that swaggers its ambition. Boasting the subtitle “A quantum whodunnit”, Decoherence duly boasts chapters called ‘Entanglement’, ‘Wave Function’, ‘Entropy’ and so on. Our hero, Sirius Peabody, … Continue reading →

Stephen Tow – Rowman and Littlefield £15.99 To have been young in London in the 1960’s must have been very heaven. At least if you had a yen to see live music in clubs and pubs and a dilapidated hotel … Continue reading →

Helen Lewis – Jonathan Cape £13.59 Well-behaved women don’t make history, and we need to be a bit grown up about our approach to feminism. That is the starting point of the new book from Helen Lewis. Lewis is a … Continue reading →

Barry Forshaw – Oldcastle Books    £12.99 Barry Forshaw is one of the UK’s leading experts on crime fiction. Writer, commentator, editor, broadcaster and enthusiast, his fingerprints are everywhere. If anybody knows where the bodies are buried, it is he. Why … Continue reading →

Steve Richards – Atlantic Books £20 You have to wonder why the office of Prime Minister is so coveted. While many politicians aspire to Number Ten, more or less all the Prime Ministers in this book spent at least some … Continue reading →

Professor James Bernard Murphy and Graeme Garrard – Bloomsbury: £10.49 In an overview of the great political thinkers of the ages, comprising thirty of the most trenchant minds in history, you would imagine that there would be room for the … Continue reading →

Mike Isaac – Norton: £19.99 It is not unusual in Silicon Valley for head office to lay on dinner for the employees. The cost is nugatory in these fabulously money-rich tech companies and it encourages people to work past quitting … Continue reading →

Ray Connolly – Malignon £7.95 “I’d like to say Thank You on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we’ve passed the audition.” John Lennon on the roof of the Apple Building on January 30th 1969 at the … Continue reading →

Ross Barnett – Bloomsbury £16.99 15,000 years ago, Britain was a very different place. The ice age was ending, and the country was lush and untamed. Sea level was then so low that Dogger Bank, in the North Sea, was … Continue reading →

Robert Elliott Smith – Bloomsbury    £20.00   In the privacy of my complacency, I am pleased to count myself moderately bright – not Stephen Fry clever but, you know, able to tie my own shoelaces and read without moving my lips. … Continue reading →

What is the purpose of debate? Is it to convince somebody, somewhere of something, or is it merely to undermine the other side and bolster your own prejudices? You may have noticed that political discourse is not always conducted in … Continue reading →

We all have our guilty pleasures. Mine include horror films, prog rock and, for the purposes of this interview, comic books. For me it was American super-heroes: Batman and the Fantastic Four and speech balloons screaming, “Mortal, I say thee … Continue reading →

A man can travel well and he can travel badly*. The hero of Randy Ross’s God Bless Cambodia is on the ‘badly’ end of the scale. At 48 Randy Burns is tired of ‘the miserable game’ (dating). He has been … Continue reading →

When we use the word ‘philosophy’ what we usually mean is “western philosophy’. But as the philosopher and bestselling author Julian Baggini points out in his new book, western philosophy accounts for only around 20% of the world’s population. Other … Continue reading →

“Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? We will tell you. It came in a vision – a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them ‘From this day on you are Beatles with an ‘A’. Thank … Continue reading →

2016 was a bad year. Globally, it was the year of Brexit and was rounded off with a Trump!  It was bad for pop music too: David Bowie had died in January. And then it seemed the heroes were rushing … Continue reading →

John Maynard Keynes said, “Above all, let finance be primarily national.” Keynes understood the dangers of unfettered finance, and if he’d had his way the Bretton Woods system of international controls would have been still stronger. In his new book, … Continue reading →