SOMEONE AT A DISTANCE by Dorothy Whipple (Persephone £10, 432pp) SOMEONE AT A DISTANCE by Dorothy Whipple (Persephone £10, 432pp) Frailty, folly and the fragility of love are brilliantly explored in Whipple’s perfect, engrossing deckchair read. Happily married Avery and Ellen are well-off, adore their teenage children and treasure their …...Read More

THE FAMILY HOLIDAY by Elizabeth Noble (Michael Joseph £7.99, 432pp) THE FAMILY HOLIDAY by Elizabeth Noble (Michael Joseph £7.99, 432pp) Charlie Chamberlain wants to mark his 80th birthday in style. He hires a fabulous Cotswolds house and invites his children and their families. They’re a troubled bunch: Nick is recovering …...Read More

THE GOLDEN RULE by Amanda Craig (Little, Brown £16.99, 400 pp) THE GOLDEN RULE by Amanda Craig (Little, Brown £16.99, 400 pp) I loved the opening to this tonally unpredictable state-of-the-nation novel, which nods to Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers On A Train. Hannah, who once worked in advertising, is struggling to …...Read More

HISTORY THE HISTORY OF MAGIC by Chris Gosden (Viking £25, 512pp) The 2011 Census revealed that 56,620 of us said we were pagans, 11,766 described themselves as Wiccans and 1,276 people confessed they were signed up to witchcraft. Twenty-seven per cent of the British population also maintained that ‘communication with …...Read More

MEMOIR ANIMAL TRUST by Julian Rota (Bramble Press £21, 330pp) Julian Rota is an eminent antiquarian book dealer: it’s a genteel-sounding world which, he admits, actually contains quite a number of dodgy characters, Del Boys and barmy bibliomaniacs. In his spare time, though, he also works as a volunteer at …...Read More

. . . are you reading now? A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, a traumatic tale of male friendship. By turns uplifting and unspeakably harrowing, the writing is exquisite. Just when you think things can’t get any worse for Jude, the protagonist, they do. The abuse he suffers as a …...Read More

MEMOIR THE BOY WITH TWO HEARTS by Hamed Amiri (Icon £16.99, 288pp) In 2001, when Hamed Amiri was ten years old, his mother made a speech declaring that women ‘have the same rights as men’. In Taliban-ruled Herat, Afghanistan, this was a radical statement, and a dangerous one: that night, …...Read More

BOOK OF THE WEEK THE WELL-GARDENED MIND by Sue Stuart-Smith (William Collins £20, 352pp) Back in 1915 Alexander Douglas Gillespie, an officer with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, wrote a letter home from the battlefields of Northern France. He told how ‘a big shell suddenly swooped down from nowhere into …...Read More

June 24 1981 is probably a date that doesn’t immediately make you think of wine. It was the day that the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only was released. Ever since watching that movie at the Odeon in Bournemouth, I’ve been on a quest to taste a particular wine …...Read More

Autistic Jonty Bravery was in council care but 'frequently assaulted' his carers and had been arrested for attacking them, the Old Bailey heard yesterday A six-year-old boy who was pushed off a tenth floor balcony at the Tate Modern has said that he would 'like to slap' his attacker, who …...Read More