books

Dr Cat Jarman has penned a new book about the Vikings, after being inspired when she discovered a small orange bead found in a mass grave in Derbyshire had come from India.

MEMOIR The Wild Track by Margaret Reynolds with Lucy Reynolds (Doubleday £16.00, 320pp)    Mothers frazzled, exasperated and (let’s be honest) often bored at the demands of looking after small children might have surveyed Professor Margaret Reynolds’s life with envy. She was — and still is — a leading academic, a writer and editor, a broadcaster, … Read more

The Panic Years by Nell Frizzell (Bantam £14.99, 336 pp)  On the morning of her 28th birthday, writer Nell Frizzell woke up in a single bed in her mother’s spare room and remembered that the man with whom she’d shared the previous six years was no longer her boyfriend. ‘As I lay there, pinned by … Read more

WHAT BOOK would children’s author Francesca Simon take to a desert island? Francesca Simon is reading Last Train From Liguria by Christine Dwyer Hickey She would take The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope to a desert island  American author said Mary Poppins by P L Travers gave her the reading bug By Daily Mail Reporter Published: 22:01 GMT, 28 January … Read more

SEED TO DUST: A GARDENER’S STORY   by Marc Hamer (Harvill Secker £14.99, 416pp) For more than two decades, Marc Hamer has tended a garden that he doesn’t own. Now he has published what feels more or less like his private gardening journal, in sections with titles such as Pruning Roses, Swifts Arrive and Solstice. But … Read more

All wrapped up: Bel Mooney reveals the best art books you can find for gifting those who love creativity Bel Mooney rounded up a selection of this year’s must-read art books British literary critic selected tomes to suit all budgets this Christmas Highlights include Spirit Of Place: Artists, Writers And The British Landscape By Bel Mooney … Read more

Why we’re all working MORE, and not less: Cambridge professor reveals how technological developments can be a threat to humanity Cambridge professor suggests advances in technology could be detrimental Suggests rise in Britain’s population leads to productivity being cancelled out Says famines, wars & pandemics are ‘imminent & severe correction’ of disorder By Roger Lewis … Read more

WHAT BOOK would TV presenter Dermot O’Leary take to a desert island? Dermot O’Leary is currently reading Into The Raging Sea by Rachel Slade  He’d take to a desert island: The Charlie Parker books by John Connolly Toto The Ninja Cat And The Mystery Jewel Thief by Dermot O’Leary is out now By Daily Mail … Read more

HISTORY  THE WHITE SHIP by Charles Spencer (William Collins £25, 352 pp) On a cold but clear November night in 1120, almost exactly 900 years ago, a ship sailed out of Barfleur harbour on the Normandy coast, bound for Southampton. Everyone on board was cheerfully drunk but perfectly optimistic.  The tide had turned and was with … Read more

POLITICS EAT THE BUDDHA  by Barbara Demick (Granta, £18.99, 272pp) The very word ‘Tibet’ has romantic, resonance.  The ‘Roof of the World’ conjures the vast snowy wastes of the High Himalayan plateau, populated by yaks, nomadic herders, yetis and Buddhist lamas in russet robes, capable of levitation and clairvoyance. Alas, there is a very different … Read more

BOOK OF THE WEEK AGENT SONYA   by Ben Macintyre (Viking £25, 416 pp) Her scones were the envy of the Oxfordshire hamlet of Great Rollright, where the friendly woman known as Mrs Burton lived in a stone farmhouse. In her late 30s, she moved there with her three children and husband Len just after the … Read more