Fairies: A History Francis Young, London: Polity, 2025, hb., 352pps., £25 To our jaded century, ‘fairy’ carries connotations ranging from the sentimental to the sickly. It conjures childishness, foolishness, insipidity and softness – Tinker Bell, the Tooth Fairy, the Cottingley photographs that fooled Arthur Conan Doyle, cakes, twinkling lights, and a certain brand of soap…. Continue reading
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Speculative sounds
The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments Deirdre Loughridge & Thomas Patteson London: Reaktion, 2026, hb., 199pps., 88 illus., £13.55 The idea that the universe has an underlying sonic structure is as old as philosophy, and as perennial. Ancient observations of planetary orbits encouraged Pythagoras to hypothesize that just as the pitch of musical notes was… Continue reading
The manuscript missionary
The Migrants: A Memoir with Manuscripts Christopher de Hamel, London: Allen Lane, 2026, 320pps., £19.65 For fifty-five years, Christopher de Hamel has been producing coruscating books attesting to his fascination with manuscripts as artistic treasures and witnesses to history, and his empathy with enthusiasts of all countries and times. The Migrants brings the story home,… Continue reading
Treasure island
Treasures on Earth – Buried Wealth in Landscape and Legend Jeremy Harte, London: Reaktion, 2026, 292pps., £15 In his Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton offers some sensible advice as one of his ‘Remedies against discontents’ – “Seek that which may be found.” Jeremy Harte’s subtle and finely written new book examines the countless Britons who have… Continue reading
“The North for greatness”
Lancashire: Exploring the Historic County that made the Modern World Chris Moss, London: Old Street, 2026, hb., 364pps., £25 In his classic 1902-1904 Collecteana, folklorist Vincent Stuckey Lean cites a proverb which has since passed into cliché – “Lancashire thinks today what all England will think tomorrow”. Travel writer Chris Moss’s task in this highly… Continue reading
Potatoes and their pathologies
Rot: A History of the Irish Famine Padraic X. Scanlan, London: Robinson, 2025, 340pps., hb., £25 Sometimes great matters can turn on – vegetables. Ancient civilization was founded on the ‘simple’ discovery that grasses could become grains, reliable and storable – allowing the emergence of fixed ‘Fertile Crescent’ cities with rulers and philosophers. But vegetables… Continue reading
Musica universalis
The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds across Landscapes and Imagination Michaela Vieser & Isaac Yuen, London: Reaktion, 2025, 175pps., hb., £14.99 “In the beginning was the Word” – but aeons before that ancient imperative there were other aural commands, within ourselves, rumbling in the gulfs of the earth, and echoing across the universe…. Continue reading
The West Turned Upside-Down
How the World Made the West Josephine Quinn, Penguin Random House, 2024, hb., 572pps., $20 I first saw this book in the window of Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford. I was struck – although not surprised – by how logically out of place it was, surrounded by the handsome architecture of old intellectual England. Written by… Continue reading
Ten Days in Provence
At some time during my teens, I came across a science-fiction story by Michael Moorcock, featuring a certain ‘Dorian Hawkmoon,’ an adventurer of a distant future who existed in a post-apocalyptic version of France’s furthest south. My memories of the book (maybe books – Hawkmoon was a recurring character in Moorcock’s ‘multiverse’) are hazy in… Continue reading
Portrait of the artist as a young novelist
The Naked Spur Alexander Adams, London: Exeter House, 2025, 304pps., pb., £14.93 (Amazon) In 2007, a burned-out young British artist arrived in Berlin from London. He rented a frigid apartment in the worst district of the city, and subsisted on coffee and chocolate while he hammered out the draft of a novel ‘inspired’ by his… Continue reading