Eman Quotah’s The Night Is Not For You (Wildfire, 2025, £20) has some fine observant writing about growing up in the small town Arab world, reviews Jeremy Black thecritic.co.uk/murders-for-…
Cynically timed for Christmas, celebrity authors have reimagined the classic PG Wodehouse characters, writes @alexlarman thecritic.co.uk/why-update-p…
“Much of the book hinges on anecdotes, starting with a genuinely amusing incident at a museum in Dudley” — @jdenicholls reviews The Big Payback, by Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder thecritic.co.uk/slaves-desce…
“Tyack’s lucid prose finds a match in Paton’s magnificent photography” — @Waslet reviews Oxford Libraries Architecture, by Geoffrey Tyack and Dan Paton thecritic.co.uk/issues/augus…
The central problem with re-writing stories — even the better ones — is that Wodehouse himself remains inimitable, argues @alexlarman thecritic.co.uk/why-update-p…
“Intellectual ballast is supplied through conversations with a host of racial activists” — @jdenicholls reviews The Big Payback, by Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder thecritic.co.uk/slaves-desce…
Murder in Wintertime (Profile, 2025) follows earlier selections edited by Cecily Gayford and again is a considerable success, reviews Jeremy Black thecritic.co.uk/murders-for-…
The popularity of Saxton’s maps reflected the desire for consistency and precision, writes Jeremy Black thecritic.co.uk/mapping-a-na…
“The authors want white people to pay black people a flat fee for centuries’ of interaction, some of it good, some of it bad” — @jdenicholls reviews The Big Payback, by Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder thecritic.co.uk/slaves-desce…
“Marozzi recalls a professor at Bilkent University in Turkey admonishing a younger historian not to dig too deep: ‘Our ancestors treated their slaves very well; don’t waste your time.’” — @SI_Rubinstein reviews Captives and Companions, by Justin Marozzi thecritic.co.uk/issues/octob…
“This is a classic of the stranded at Christmas genre, in this case due to a train becoming stuck in the snow, and passengers taking refuge. Brilliant.” — Jeremy Black reviews Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon thecritic.co.uk/murders-for-…
“To say more would spoil, but, in the second and third parts of the book, we discover that Jatgeir is not necessarily the central character” — @john_self reviews Vaim, by Jon Fosse thecritic.co.uk/small-lives-…
“The British public are hungry to learn about their history” — Conor McKee reviews Sceptred Isle: A New History of the Fourteenth Century, by @HelenhCarr thecritic.co.uk/sceptred-isl…
“Frank Skinner’s story include a bizarre incident in which Bertie and Jeeves have been cryogenically frozen for decades” — @alexlarman reviews Jeeves Again thecritic.co.uk/why-update-p…
“People have always been hesitant to draw any comparisons between Islamic and Atlantic slavery” — @SI_Rubinstein reviews Captives and Companions, by Justin Marozzi thecritic.co.uk/issues/octob…
“The unique flavour of this book is the way Saisio splits the narrative, switching from an immediate first person to a more distant third, often mid-sentence” — @john_self reviews Lowest Common Denominator, by Pirkko Saisio thecritic.co.uk/small-lives-…
“Fletcher provides valuable details about government support for the project and its impact on Saxton’s method” — Jeremy Black reviews The Queen’s Atlas. Saxton’s Elizabethan Masterpiece, by David Fletcher thecritic.co.uk/mapping-a-na…
“Ultimately, the book becomes hollowed-out art history, pressing stray biographical details into service as proof of a thesis” — @SalemLola reviews The Foreign Invention of British Art, by Leslie Primo thecritic.co.uk/to-have-to-h…
“I was not expecting to have a liberal male mansplain how gestation is a breeze, but here we are” — @beatrixscudeler reviews Sex is a Spectrum by Agustín Fuentes thecritic.co.uk/vive-la-diff…
“Knowing the period well, I inevitably spotted some events where recollections may vary” — @matthew_elliott reviews Between The Waves, by Tom McTague thecritic.co.uk/issues/octob…
