Churchill’s Britain: From the Antrim Coast to the Isle of Wight
Peter Clark
Haus Publishing, £20
A travel guide which touches on Churchill's relationship with Ireland. As an infant he holidayed at the vice-regal lodge in the Phoenix Park, his grandfather was lord lieutenant. His grandmother, from a leading Orange Protestant family, left him property (a nice little earner) in Co Antrim. On one visit, it is reported, he met the local postmistress. "I've come to see the village founded by my great-grandmother," he said. "Mr Churchill," she replied, "Carnlough existed long before her." In 1912 as a Liberal MP for Dundee he was rapturously cheered on the Falls Road when he supported Home Rule only, later, to champion the unionist cause and partition and, after the assassination of Henry Wilson, threaten Collins that he would reinvade if he didn't confront the IRA, thus triggering the civil war. – Danny Morrison
The Penguin Book of Oulipo
Edited by Philip Terry
Penguin Modern Classics, £12.99
Members of Oulipo, the playful and experimental French literary group founded in 1960, devote themselves to applying formal constraints to the composition of literary texts. (The name is an acronym of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle – the workshop of potential literature.) Perhaps the most famous of the group's constrained works is Georges Perec's lipogramatic 1969 novel La disparition, composed without using the letter e, and brilliantly translated into English by Gilbert Adair as A Void. This fascinating anthology of Oulipian texts, in addition to drawing on precursors ("anticipatory plagiarists", to use the favoured Oulipian term) such as Jonathan Swift and Raymond Roussel, selects writing by early members Perec, Italo Calvino and the group's co-founder Raymond Queneau, includes pieces written by those inspired by Oulipian experiment, and brings things up to date with recent work by current members, for example, Michèle Métail and Anne Garréta. Editor Philip Terry includes an index of constraints ("palindrome", "irrational sonnet") with useful definitions for the understandably perplexed. An essential introduction to the ludic, rule-bound world of a remarkable literary association. – Karl Whitney
Time Out
Emma Murray
Boldwood Books
In her debut novel, Murray attempts to give a real insight into the challenges (but please don't use that sanitised word!) of first-time motherhood. Saoirse, an Irish writer and mother-of-one, is fed up with her clueless, pedantic husband, the holier-than-thou social media mummies, who tell her what to feed her child (home-grown, organic) and how to dress her child (home-made, organic). Not to mention the old biddies at the bus stop who tell her, "these are best days" of her life – as if! Time Out gives an insight into the pressures and isolation of modern motherhood, not neglecting humour and warmth. At times, tropes are overplayed, and the author's casual approach to language may appeal to some more than others. Nonetheless, no doubt this is a theme that will appeal to many readers. – Brigid O'Dea
