Little Englanders are cut down to size
Liam Bailey finds the depiction of a model village in Forever England unexpectedly affecting.
The line of duty
Book of the week: In The Plimsoll Sensation, Nicolette Jones provides Samuel Plimsoll with the monument he has long deserved, says Geoffrey Moorhouse.
Ben and his boys
Lucasta Miller applauds Britten's Children, John Bridcut's sensitively-handled exploration of Benjamin Britten's obsession with adolescents.
Wives and daughters
Bernardine Evaristo applauds Ancestor Stones, Aminatta Forna’s look at a society in transition
Paradise lost
Jane Smiley continues her series on the novel with Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John, the story of a girl growing up in the Caribbean, which hints at wider meanings beyond her childhood world.
‘We go tomorrow’
Shrapnel still glints in the clay and skeletal remains go on being unearthed. On the 90th anniversary of the battle of the Somme, Mark Bostridge revisits the personal stories of troops on the front line.
The bottom line about Mr Plimsoll
In her compelling biography, The Plimsoll Sensation, Nicolette Jones details how Mariners, miners and beer drinkers alike all have good reason to thank a typically fertile Victorian inventor, says Simon Garfield.
A tale of two cities
And Still I Rise by Doreen Lawrence | Londonistan by Melanie Phillips
Love, actually
Jessica Cran finds much to admire in Pamela Norris's Words of Love, a social and cultural history of the feminine experience of love.
Two faces of regime change
Occupational Hazards by Rory Stewart, a devastating report from the coalition's governor in Iraq, contrasts sharply with The Wonga Coup by Adam Roberts which details Mark Thatcher's African disgrace, says Robert McCrum.
Chive talkin’
Tom Williams is frustrated at how little we actually learn about Vic Reeves in his autobiography, Me: Moir Volume One.
The true prince of Wales
Even those with only a passing knowledge of his poetry will want to sit down and read this excellent biography of RS Thomas by Byron Rogers, The Man Who Went Into the West, says Killian Fox.
A good case, a bad argument
Rebecca Seal has difficulty fully accepting all the evidence in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's The Caged Virgin: A Muslim Woman's Cry for Reason.
A future beyond sacred cows
In Pankaj Mishra's Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond, Soumya Bhattacharya finds a compelling blend of memoir, narrative history, politics, religion and philosophy.
Titus Andronicus
Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon