Dora Simon and Joe O’Cleary live in separate countries, accepting of their twilight years. But their monochrome worlds are abruptly upended by the arrival of Barbara Hummel, who is determined to identify the mysterious woman whose photograph she has found among her mother s possessions. Forced to confront a time they thought buried in the […]
Review: The Hidden by Mary Chamberlain
Mary Chamberlain’s latest novel is The Hidden, which focuses on the German occupation of the Channel Islands during the Second World War. Duncan Barrett reviews her “taut and troubling” book. In 2016, I spent three months in the Channel Islands, interviewing more than a hundred men and women who lived through the German Occupation during […]
Dark Water by Elizabeth Lowry
Dark Water, Elizabeth Lowry’s dark psychological novel set in the early 19th century
Lancelot by Giles Kristian
Rome is burning. In Britain, Uther Pendragon is dying. Enemies stalk his land. Into this uncertain world a boy is cast. An outsider, plagued by memories of those he’s lost. Under the watchful eye of Merlin, the boy begins his journey to manhood. He meets another outcast, Guinevere, wild, proud and beautiful. And he is […]
Mrs Whistler by Matthew Plampin
Chelsea, 1876. Struggling artist Jimmy Whistler is at war with his patron. Denied full payment, he and muse Maud Franklin face ruin. As Jimmy’s enemies mount, he resolves to sue a famous critic for libel, in a last-ditch attempt to ward off the bailiffs. Although she has no position in society, Maud is expected to […]
Peterloo by Jacqueline Riding
On a hot late summer’s day, a crowd of 60,000 gathered in St Peter’s Field. They came from all over Lancashire – ordinary working-class men, women and children – walking to the sound of hymns and folk songs, wearing their best clothes and holding silk banners aloft. Their mood was happy, their purpose wholly serious: […]