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CHESS Checkmate! by Sally Landau (Elk and Ruby £17.99, 223 pp) No one said it was easy to be married to a genius. Especially one with appalling medical problems. Yet that was Sally Landau’s choice. In 1959, at the age of 19, she married Mikhail ‘Misha’ Tal. A year later he was to become, at … Read more
MYSTICAL By Eithne Farry For The Daily Mail Published: 22:07 GMT, 9 May 2019 | Updated: 10:20 GMT, 10 May 2019 THE PORPOISE by Mark Haddon (Chatto £18.99, 336 pp) THE PORPOISE by Mark Haddon (Chatto £18.99, 336 pp) Mark Haddon’s beguiling yet unsettling take on Shakespeare’s Pericles begins in the modern world — with … Read more
BOOK OF THE WEEK WORKING WITH WINSTON by Cita Stelzer (Head of Zeus £20, 400 pp) Fetch me klop!’ That was Winston Churchill, barking instructions to his quaking new secretary Kathleen Hill in 1937, on her first evening working for him. ‘Klop’ was Churchill’s private onomatopoeic word for his hole-puncher. But Kathleen had no idea … Read more
WHAT BOOK would military historian Damien Lewis take to a desert island? Damien Lewis revealed he is reading Special Operations In The Age Of Chivalry He would take Andrew Roberts’ Churchill: Walking With Destiny to an island J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings books that gave him the reading bug By Daily Mail Reporter … Read more
HISTORY She-Merchants, Buccaneers And Gentlewomen: British Women in India by Katie Hickman (Virago £20, 400 pp) A superb spectacle was seen across Northern India in 1838: exotic figures riding elephants and horses, followed by some 12,000 soldiers and servants. They travelled around India and the whole tour took a leisurely 18 months. At the head … Read more
BOOK OF THE WEEK HENRY VIII: THE DECLINE AND FALL OF A TYRANT by Robert Hutchinson (W&N £20, 432pp) The bride was 19, petite, vivacious and flirty, with a mass of auburn hair tumbling down her back. The groom, 30 years older, was enormously fat, flatulent, possessed of a volcanic temper and with ulcerated legs … Read more
MEMOIR THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT by Sabrina Cohen-Hatton (Doubleday £16.99, 304 pp) There’s been an explosion in a tunnel. The air fills with the sound of sirens; dazed and bloodied people stagger out through the smoke as emergency services struggle to get their vehicles past dozens of cars abandoned in the road. Senior firefighter … Read more
HISTORY GREEN GOLD by Gabriel Hemery (Unbound £10.99, 280 pp) Victorian plant-hunters were the astronauts of their age, capturing the popular imagination as they set off on exotic expeditions to discover new flora and fauna. Like space travel today, these trips were fraught with peril. When 23-year-old John Jeffrey left his native Scotland for the … Read more
WHAT BOOK would historian and nature writer John Lewis-Stempel, take to a desert island? John Lewis-Stempel revealed that he’s currently reading Le Grand Meaulnes He would take Delphi ’s The Complete Works Of John Clare to a desert island He says reading BB’s The Little Grey Men sparked his interest in books By Daily Mail Reporter … Read more
There’s only one downside to visiting St Petersburg. You quickly realise you’ll have to return again and again if you want to see everything. I’ve visited the Russian city six times over the past 30 years and still feel I’ve only scraped the surface. The Winter Palace is second only to Versailles in architecture and … Read more