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
Posts Tagged → Derek Turner
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 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
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
Anglo-apocalypse
Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group Rebecca Gransden, London: Tangerine Press, 2025, 93pps., £15 This powerful novella is set in southern England, following some vaguely described disaster, which is causing everything to collapse, and everyone to flee in panic. “There’s something spreading up from the far south east,” one man ‘explains’ to protagonist Flo… Continue reading
Thomas Elyot and self-government – why the rulers of realms must also govern themselves
“Wo is the coutrey, where the ruler is wanton” Sir Thomas Elyot, The Bankette of Sapience Sir Thomas Elyot (1490?-1546) is remembered as an eminent English humanist, and pioneer in the use of English instead of Latin for literary purposes. He was a copious and earnest scholar who strove mightily to “augment our Englyshe tongue”[i]… Continue reading
Samuel Pepys – maker of the Navy, shaper of Stuart England
Many people throughout history have kept diaries of some kind, but I suggest that Samuel Pepys is, as the Encyclopædia Britannica puts it, “the greatest diarist of all.” Pepys’ 1.25 million words on the period 1660-1669 is not just a unique record of a formative and hugely interesting period in English life, but a ground-breaking… Continue reading
#Mediterranean Refugee Crisis 2015
“The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today” James Joyce, Ulysses On watch –In a long slow timeless washReflux of freighted watersSlim frigates ride –Grey grace the warping waves bestrideAnd fall and rise again like GreeksUpreared on dolphins(That classic life still breathingLike a soul trapped in a ribcage.) Our SeaFloats palaces and palm trees –Towns sick with age,… Continue reading