bwl 120 - Spring 2026
Fiction
| Miklos Banffy - They Were Counted (vol.1 of the Transylvanian Trilogy)
|
| Hungary pre WWI and the aristocracy at play. The lives of cousins Balint and Laszlo weave in and out of this epic description of the declining years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - balls, shooting weekends in stately homes, gambling, family feuds, illicit love, all against a background of political chaos. A crowded canvas, alright, but I found myself completely immersed. Just started on volume two.... ahhh.... more of the same, hooray!
(Annabel Bedini)
|
| Emily Howes - The Painter's Daughters
|
| Familiar with Gainsborough’s paintings, I knew nothing of his family life and Howes uses his daughters, Peggy and Molly, as inspiration for this story. The sisters are very close with Peggy particularly protective of Molly which becomes more difficult as they grow up and are launched into Bath Society. A character called Meg is introduced into the story and gradually you realise her significance. It becomes a fascinating and moving novel of art, love and betrayal. (Christine Miller)
|
| Orla Mackey - Mouthing
|
| A debut novel that reveals the life of a small town in Ireland through a series of monologues that depict the different perspectives of interlinked lives. Mackey sharply observes all the ups and downs of life, and the individual voices develop the layers of the community quite vividly. However, I found that I had to check the connections from time to time perhaps because I was reading too quickly – a fault of mine! (Christine Miller)
|
| Alexander McCall Smith - The Winds from Further West
|
| Looking for an uplifting read then this might be one to fit the bill. The life of Neil, a researcher at Edinburgh University, is suddenly overturned by a false accusation and a personal betrayal. He escapes to the Isle of Mull to lick his wounds and try to start a new life. Nice to read a novel with a beginning, middle and a feel-good end.
(Jenny Baker)
|
| Philip Pullman - The Rose Field
|
| Long awaited this final volume to the Book of Dust trilogy has finally arrived. Perhaps the wait has just been too long but somehow the characters no longer engaged and the plot was so convoluted that I just couldn’t keep up. I loved all his other books and was all agog to read this one. (Jenny Baker)
|
| Colm Toibin - House of Names
|
| In this brilliant retelling of the classic Greek myth of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra Toibin explores the effects of excessive patriarchal power on a wife’s thwarted ambition, leading to family intrigue, betrayal, bloodshed and forced exile. The tragedy unfolds as a first person narrative by the three guilty family members as they take their violent revenge. It feels intimate, modern and contemporary and therefore all the more chilling. I absolutely loved it. (Denise Lewis)
|
| Perrine Tripier - Our Precious Wars
|
| A prize winning debut novel from French author Perrine Tripier. Isadora, now spending her final days in a nursing home recalls and reflects on her long life in a series of vignettes and flashbacks seen through the prism of the seasons and nature. Central is her beloved "House" which she never left, peopled by her extended family, but the stand out feature is the luminous, lyrical prose, each word placed with care as stitches in a tapestry. (Sue Pratt)
|
| Elizabeth Von Arnim - The Enchanted April
|
| Published in 1922, this has lost nothing in aging. Four women, previously unknown to each other, rent a castle on the Ligurian coast. Each has her personal knot of unhappiness and this is the perceptive and extremely funny tale of how the knots get unravelled in the atmosphere of beauty and sunshine. I read it straight through twice, picking up the second time gems I had missed in my first gallop. Enchanted April? Enchanted me!
(Annabel Bedini)
|
| Pip Williams - The Bookbinder of Jericho
|
| WW I, the men are called away, Peggy and her twin-sister work in the bookbinding department of the Oxford University Press, folding, cutting the pages, but forbidden to read the words and at night going home to the narrowboat on which they live. Peggy longs to be educated but women have no place in the university. It’s a real eye-opener into how those books we take for granted were made, everything done by hand. One of those reads where the pages seem to turn themselves.
(Jenny Baker)
|
| Benjamin Wood - Seascraper
|
| A Booker Prize contender, this short novel tells the story of a young man trapped in a life of trawling for shrimps along the sea shore but dreaming of courting a local girl and performing at the folk club. A stranger appears to offer him the glamour of film making but all is not quite as it seems. A hard, traditional life on a bleak and dangerous northern sea shore is vividly depicted and makes the story well worth reading but I found the account of the sudden possible means of escape a little perfunctory and not totally convincing. (Tony Pratt)
|
Non-Fiction
| Alice Loxton - Eleanor
|
| Alice follows Eleanor of Castile’s funeral cortege of December of 1290 from Harby in Notts to Lincoln Cathedral and then to London. She does it at the same time of year. The bereaved Edward I has constructed masonry crosses at each overnight stopping point although only a few have survived the Civil War. Alice notes various points of historical interest along the way. Very entertaining.
(Ros Cook)
|
| Ben Macintyre - Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle
|
| A trip down memory lane, inspired by a recent visit to Colditz and by remembrance of an uncle who was ‘banged up’ there for 5 years. Uncle Jimmy led the prison orchestra whilst also operating a clandestine radio in the castle’s eaves – incidentally not discovered until the 1960’s. Macintyre writes at pace and has cornered nostalgia history of WW2. He deftly blends the derring-do and ingenuity of escape attempts with the ennui of captivity. Popular, though not scholarly history. (Jeremy Miller)
|
| Lara Maiklem - Mudlarking
|
| A very readable and interesting book by a mudlarker on the Thames. It is as much about the river’s history and geography, and the personal reasons why Lara has spent years trawling the foreshore for debris-come-treasure, as it is about the items she has found. Her chapters follow the tidal Thames from Teddington to the Estuary, becoming rather dramatic towards the end, convincing me I could never do it. (Ros Cook)
|
| Gisèle Pelicot - A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides
|
| Reading her account of the vicissitudes of their married life, the transformation of husband Dominique into sexual monster seems incomprehensible, viz, her own incredulity. Blaming her increasingly worrying symptoms on a probable brain tumor she battled on bravely with normal life, utterly unsuspicious. Then the shattering truth came out and her sudden courageous decision not to hold the trial behind closed doors. Since when, of course, she has become an icon for female resistance. Truly remarkable. (Annabel Bedini)
|
| Jonathan Raban - Passage to Juneau
|
| Raban sails single-handed from Seattle to Juneau through the middle passage. This is a wistful journey for an elderly travel writer with acute sense of place and history. Modern times have deprived former thriving seaboard communities. There are echoes in the author’s private life (no spoilers) which are made even more poignant by threading into his travels the fortunes of Captain Vancouver who charted the American Northwest in the late C18th. Evocative stuff! (Jeremy Miller)
|
| James Rebanks - The Place of Tides
|
| A Cumbrian hill farmer in need of mental regeneration joins a lady in her final season tending wild nesting eider ducks on a remote Norwegian island; a cultural and family tradition of eider feather harvesting. Here you will find evocative descriptions of landscape, natural history and culture in addition to human endeavour and emotion. I loved it.
(Ros Cook)
|
| Nigel Slater - A Thousand Feasts
|
| Not a recipe book but a collection of moments of pleasure, memories and food. I admire Slater’s writing and the sheer joy he finds in the smallest of things, be it a piece of fruit or a plant. The descriptions of his travels to Japan and Korea ensure you share the moment with him and I almost feel that I have sat in his garden such are his descriptive powers. A pleasure to read.
(Christine Miller)
|
| Barbara Tuchman - The Proud Tower: A portrait of the world before the war 1890-1914
|
| Though written in the 1960’s, this masterful and eminently readable tour d’horizon of the fin de siècle and impending world war is totally beguiling. The author draws upon her immense scholarship and attention to detail to evoke the mood of the time. Nothing is more atmospheric than the final chapter which recounts the assassination of the French socialist and pacifist Jean Jaures on 31July 1914. Three days later, the cataclysmic events began. (Jeremy Miller)
|
| Alwyn Turner - A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars
|
| A highly readable portrait of Britain in the inter war years. The politics - Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay Macdonald, Oswald Moseley, General Strike, and Ireland included - are covered but it is the social and cultural developments that are the main appeal. An age starting with Marie Lloyd and ending with Henry Hall and Tommy Handley and taking in characters like George Formby and the extraordinary John Reith of the BBC cannot fail to entertain. (Tony Pratt)
|
Poetry
| Catherine Clarke - A History of England in 25 Poems |
| This is a great book. The poems’ nuances are used to explain the histories emerging. We are taken from Bede to the present, via Viking, plague, religious turmoil, poets below stairs, the Rump Parliament, War, Brexit and contemporary politics. The poems in Old English are lyrical to listen to (audiobook). Wildlife makes frequent appearances and Clarke makes the poignant point that as we lose it, we lose our connection with 1300 years of poets’ experiences.
(Ros Cook) |
| Simon Armitage - Dwell |
| Inspired by the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall, Simon Armitage (Poet Laureate) has written this collection of poems on the theme of dwellings built and inhabited by an assortment of nature's indigenous wild creatures. The slim volume - beautifully illustrated by Beth Munro's prints - is quite simply the perfect antidote to so much horror and destruction happening in the world today. Original and witty, it's a joy to dip into, savour the words, and just 'dwell'!
(Mary Standing) |
|
