Books

People, places, plot – get the right balance between the three elements and your budding book is coming along. For Simenon it was the places that gave the atmosphere, usually in Paris or the French countryside, and the plot generally took care of itself ...

Beat groups worked themselves into the ground in Britain in the early 1960s, crisscrossing the land in an exhausting series of concerts. The Rolling Stones, for instance, racking up more than 800 shows around Britain between 1963 and 1966, leaving riotous audiences in their ...

Robert Babirad was inspired to write his debut novel, “Love in Budapest”, after his experiences during his first visit to Hungary to visit family and friends last summer, spending time in the capital and Lenti, in Zala county. It was the first time that ...

Conventional wisdom advises against returning, decades later, to a place for which you hold happy memories – a birthplace, a childhood home or a honeymoon spot, perhaps. Things would have inevitably changed with time and those roseate memories could be shattered. In November 2020 ...

Whether or not we actually need a “fifth Beatle” has never really been a consideration for those Fab Four “scholars” and over-enthusiastic fans who like to spend some of their valuable time applying themselves to this gripping conundrum.

A Manchester, UK-based publisher is filling an engrossing niche in the field of rock music literature with a series of books that tell the story of top bands through the eyes and words of fans who went to their concerts. Editions so far have ...

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, still just a 19-year-old, will publish her fourth book this autumn, which aims to offer a “global overview of how the planet’s many crises connect”.

Belgian author Georges Simenon (1903-89) lived in four countries and travelled worldwide but details of his visit to the USSR in the early 1930s are sketchy. What’s remembered more today is that the visit gave birth to this novel, considered a singular effort among ...

Military historian Stuart Lloyd recounts how, on February 14, 1942, rampaging Japanese troops in Singapore forced an Allied retreat around — and controversially even through – the Alexandra Hospital. The Japanese bayonetted patients in their beds and an anaesthetised man on the operating table. ...

December 2022 – Soviet forces have occupied Ukraine. Tens of thousands of troops and civilians are dead. Resistance groups in the woods kill a few Soviet soldiers, blow up rail tracks and bring down power lines. In retaliation the Soviets shoot hostages and raze ...