The Guardian
Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan – review
Despite the four recipes appended to it, Michael Pollan's Cooked doesn't actually belong on the shelf with the cookery books.
Why Venice Biennale needs Ai Weiwei
Like Beuys in the 70s or Duchamp in 1917, with Ai Weiwei we have the privilege of seeing a modern master in his moment Who will be the star of this year's Venice Biennale? Ai Weiwei. Not since Joseph Beuys created his sublime installation Tram Stop in t
Selected Poems by Sophie Hannah - review
A funny, passionate collection of poetry that delights with its artful rumpty-tumpty-tum I used to be suspicious of those poems that rhyme; I felt a snobbish need to sneer, or spurn, or shirk such verse. To understand it took too little time.
Relatively Speaking - review
This is the play that in 1967 gave Alan Ayckbourn his first West End hit. Seeing it again after all these years, in Lindsay Posner's witty production, I was reminded of the play's brilliance as a theatrical construct.
Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies, by Hadley Freeman - review
Hadley Freeman's memoir masquerading as a survival guide is fresh, witty and packs a serious punch Anyone who professes to hate the Daily Mail while being addicted to its "sidebar of shame" (the celebrity-packed right-hand feed on its website) will fee
The Society of Timid Souls by Polly Morland - review
Polly Morland's study of bravery is executed with energy, curiosity - and courage You might think an inquiry into the nature of courage a trumped-up excuse for a book but Polly Morland loses no time in persuading you otherwise. She approaches her subject
The Hope Factory by Lavanya Sankaran - review
There are strong echoes of Dickens in this vibrant portrait of ambition and struggle in Bangalore Anand and Kamala are both dreaming big. He's the hardworking boss of a car factory in Bangalore with his eye on a lucrative Japanese deal; she's his domesti
This House is Haunted, by John Boyne - review
A Victorian governess confronts ghosts as she tries to come to terms with her father's death in a wonderfully creepy novel It is 1867, London, and Charles Dickens is giving a reading near the house of 21-year-old Eliza Caine and her ailing father. As Dic
Grace and Mary by Melvyn Bragg - review
Melvyn Bragg's latest novel is an insightful, moving tale of ageing and our helplessness in the face of dementia There's a scene in Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine where the Ryan Gosling character redecorates the room of an old gent in a nursing ho