Two big histories are tackled at length this week – former Press Ombudsman John Horgan reviews The Irish Times: 150 Years of Influence by Terence Brown and historian Charles Townshend reviews A Nation and Not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution 1913-1923 by Diarmaid Ferriter.

Two very different artistic lives are also assessed: Mary McGuckian, whose film on Eileen Gray, The Price of Desire, will be screened at the Dublin Film Festival, reviews Eileen Gray: Her Work and Her World, by Jennifer Goff, while author and musician Peter Murphy looks at Johnny Rogan’s latest music biography, Ray Davies – A Complicated Life.

On the fiction front, novelist Anne Haverty reviews The Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan; Sarah Gilmartin’s New Fiction column considers Sarah Bannan’s Weightless; and Eileen Battersby reviews The Vegetarian by Korean author Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith.

Declan Burke’s crime column interrogates SJ Watson’s Second Life, Steve Cavanagh’s debut novel The Defence, Jane Lythell’s After the Storm, Attica Locke’s Pleasantville and The Whites by Richard Price, writing as Harry Brandt.

Author and critic Patricia Craig reviews Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane and Bert Wright explores some of the themes of this month’s Mountains to Sea literary festival.