Books

Cheeky blinder

Isobel Williams’s treatment of selected poems is literary charcuterie, as neat as it is naughty

Tangled up in the myth of Dylan

Age hasn’t withered Dylan. He was always running towards it, arms open wide.

The making of a maelstrom

How the Anglophile Kaiser Wilhelm went to war with Britain

“We did everything we could”

This book offers an insider’s account of the extraordinary (in)decision-making among Johnson’s team during the most tumultuous year in modern history

Faustian bargains of the review world

Jeremy Black delves into a history book which disappoints and a biography not to be missed

Riffing on the poetic tradition

William Poulos says that in his wisdom and readability, Llewelyn Morgan serves his subject well

Riotous isle of vanilla gangsters, lemurs and a DJ president

In his new book on Madagascar, John Gimlette tells of trouble in paradise

Hartlepool and the dignity of Labour

After losing Hartlepool to the Conservatives, the Labour Party would do well to take heed of Jon Cruddas’s new book

The perils of privilege

Musa Okwonga’s memoir about his time at Eton is a confused account of having access to everywhere but belonging nowhere

The fundamental truths of fiction

Kit Wilson says the slow atrophy of the English novel is contributing to a decline in empathy and the rise of tribalism, trolling and “stay in your lane” identity politics