The latest releases reviewed.
Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain
Judith Flanders,
Harper Perennial, £9.99
Reading this cheerfully commodious social history may induce pangs of nostalgia for a time when consumer goods could safely be regarded as "auxiliaries" to "Moral and Intellectual growth", when the purchase of a Patent Ventilating Hat or a plate-glass piano marked a man out as an advocate of Progress and (crucially) Good Taste. Flanders rivetingly captures the high-energy combination of earnestness and eccentricity that so endears Victorian inventiveness to a more lax contemporary sensibility. There are chapters on the nascent mass-market publishing industry and on the era's most enduring contribution to Western culture: the investiture of Christmas as a festival of conspicuous consumption. This book is a marvel of research readably distributed and erudition lightly worn. Kevin Power
Mayflower: A Voyage to War
Nathaniel Philbrick,
Harper Perennial, £9.99
The author writes that the Pilgrim Fathers' two-month voyage across the Atlantic, in a battered, leaky ship, set off too late, was long, painful and disheartening and when they landed they first encamped on an Indian graveyard. Fortunately for them the Pokanoket tribe had been suffering from a mysterious plague and consequently could not confront the new settlers. As the number of settlers increased with new arrivals, so also did the relationship with the natives deteriorate. Indians were sold into slavery, forced off their land and within a few generations outright warfare prevailed. Philbrick whacks us over the head with a figurative tomahawk to alert us to what he describes as the missing years of early American history. The author is an experienced sailor and no mean researcher. He writes with authority on a fascinating, complex subject. Owen Dawson
The Brodsky Touch
Lana Citron
Bloomsbury. £7.99
Meet Issy Brodsky, agent provocateur with the less-than-ethical Honey Trap Detective Agency, aspiring comedian and mother to five year-old Max, the human tornado. When Issy wins the chance to perform stand-up in the Edinburgh Festival, she can't quite believe her luck and she jumps at the opportunity to win over the festival crowd, while carrying out a bit of covert detective work on the side. Her efforts in both areas seem to be paying off until an on-stage flashback to Max's conception seriously disrupts her set and any chance of a career in comedy. And it seems one of her old unsolved cases is not going to disappear quietly either. Will Issy's greatest impediment, something she calls "The Brodsky Touch", ever disappear and give our witty heroine hope for the future? Lana Citron's own experience as a stand-up comedian inspired this slick, funky and outrageously funny novel. Claire Looby
The High Road To China: George Bogle, the Panchen Lama and the First British Expedition to Tibet
Kate Teltscher
Bloomsbury, £8.99
"The Lama is a short fat Man, and as merry as a Criquet." When Dr Kate Teltscher stumbled upon this colourful description of the Panchen Lama, the second-highest-ranking lama after the Dalai Lama, she was inspired to write this remarkably thorough history of the first British expedition to Tibet, in 1774. Drawing heavily on the private correspondence of George Bogle, East India Company envoy to Tibet, Teltscher has written the definitive account of British trading ambitions in the region in the late 18th century. Bogle's brief was to open trade relations with the Chinese Emperor. Fortunately this erudite and open-minded young Scot formed a genuine attachment to Tibet and its people and diligently documented his encounters in his private journal and personal correspondence. This is a fascinating and meticulous narrative. Eleanor Fitzsimons
Europe East and West
Norman Davies
Pimlico, £14.99
This collection of essays continues the project begun in Davies's monumental Europe: A History, published 10 years ago: to restore eastern European history to its rightful place as part of the story of the continent as a whole. The essays challenge prejudices and distortions and are written with vigour, clarity and wit. Gems of wit abound. For example, those transported by the British to Australia had to endure hardships such as a sea voyage of many months, a life of abuse while their sentences lasted and no provision for their return. "It is no surprise that the survivors turned out to be one of the hardiest breeds on earth - inured to the terrors of the wilderness, to the torments of heat and drought and, not least, to the tedium of cricket." Bri an Maye
The Angel of History
Bruno Arpaia
Canongate, £7.99
From the smoky cafes of Paris and debates about Brecht to the French prison camps and the horror of the front line, this novel follows two very different tales of war. Bruno Arpaia takes the story of Walter Benjamin, the German literary scholar, and loosely entwines it with that of a young, adventurous Spanish militant. While Benjamin, a Jew, languishes in Paris, struggling to write as he ponders his fate, across the border Laureano is fuelled with passion - in the fight against Franco and for Mercedes, the girl with the green eyes in Barcelona. Arpaia cleverly tempers the despairing and reclusive character of Benjamin with Laureano's cheeky but determined character as their stories move gradually - at times a little sluggishly - to a powerful finale. On a remote moutainside in Spain, the paths of this unlikely pair meet in a touching moment that captures both the tragic and bizarre consequences of war. Sorcha Hamilton