A Chill in the Air by Iris Origo review – trauma and survival in war-torn Italy

One of 20th century’s great diarists provides an unflinching chronicle of life in Mussolini’s Italy

Daemon Voices review – wise words from a craftsman

Philip Pullman’s collection of insightful essays on the power of storytelling

Teenage book reviews – thrills, spills and girl power

A boarding school for self-absorbed artists, a handbook on changing the world, and bright young women standing up to the bullies

Fiction for older children reviews – snow quests, standup and skullduggery

A well-plotted comic quest from Harry Hill, a treat of a seafaring saga, and a Dickensian dystopia in which a fox leaves an orphanage in search of home

Picture books for children reviews – tinselly tales for a child’s Christmas

From Quentin Blake’s Scrooge to Judith Kerr’s new cat Katinka and beyond, picture book present ideas abound…

Betting the House by Tim Ross and Tom McTague and Fallout by Tim Shipman review – Theresa May’s fatal error

Two entertaining books expose the destructive role played by the prime minister’s chief advisers in her disastrous 2017 campaign

House of Lords and Commons by Ishion Hutchinson review – new literary territory

Slavery, a dub musician as Noah and memories of a Jamaican childhood inform a collection that subverts history’s grand narratives

Imperium review – Robert Harris’s Cicero epic is a Roman triumph for the RSC

Mike Poulton’s two-part adaptation of Harris’s trilogy is an exhilarating and timely political drama about a democracy descending into tyranny

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe review – Sally Cookson conjures magic of make-believe

Technical trickery is cast aside for imaginative props made from bedsheets and suitcases, bringing the essential wonder back to CS Lewis’s frosty adventure

Dawn of the New Everything by Jaron Lanier review – virtual reality patter

The techno-sage and Silicon Valley insider sees VR as emancipatory and liberating but what does ‘shared lucid dreaming’ actually mean?

The Woman in White review – can this cast solve Lloyd Webber’s musical mystery?

A masterly set of actors leave their mark on a gothic revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 2004 misfire which flattens the spikier elements of the Victorian novel

Tim Adams’s best biographies of 2017

From rock’n’roll to Anthony Powell via a crop of memoirs, there’s something for everyone in the year’s life studies

Robin McKie’s best science books of 2017

Why good health requires good sleep, the role our senses play in what we choose to consume, and some mind-boggling maths about the air that we breathe

Anthony Sattin’s best history books of 2017

How the Victorians acquainted us with our bodies, landmark studies of Stalin and the holocaust, and traitors laid bare

Carol Rumens’s best poetry books of 2017

The year was marked by a wealth of new black and ethnic minority voices and a rich haul of debuts