4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Whilst I had always known about moths, I had never really taken the time to look at them as a group of insects. Since reading Much Ado about Mothing, which was published earlier this year I have been keeping my eyes peeled for moths around the home and garden. We have had a few and a friend and neighbour occasionally have a moth trap running so I have been round to see what they have attracted in the morning.

Given that there are around 2500 different species, it amazes me that so many of them have very different and individual names. There are some fantastic names too, including, Nut Tree Tussock, Scalloped Hazel, Frosted Orange and Feathered Thorn. I tended to think of butterflies having all the glamour, but looking at some of the photos in here, there are some equally beautiful moths, including, Waved Umber, Clouded Border, Brindled green and Scare Silver Lines.

In lots of ways, this is not an easy book to review, because it is not a book that you would generally read from cover to cover. That said what James Lowen has produced here is a first-class beginners guide book to British moths that you will be most like to find if using a moth trap. The photos are first class, and the information that accompanies each moth is full of useful details, such as when you are most likely to see one, the area of the country and any specific habitats that they are most likely to be found in. It must be remembered that this is a gateway guide and does not have every species in. If you are after more comprehensive books, he has even listed them in the back along with other resources for moth addiction…

3.5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Dilys Powell’s first fell in love with the country and people of Greece in 1931. She was there with her husband, the archaeologist Humfry Payne, who was undertaking an archaeological dig at the time. She came to know the villagers who were being employed as labourers on the site and came to know them as friends as they spent years camping on the sun-drenched site.

Tragically her husband was to die in 1936 from a staphylococcus infection. Her experience of the Greek people led to a Political Warfare Executive, but it was a place that she longed to return to. That opportunity came after the war when she returned time and time again to Perachora, the site of Payne’s excavations of the Heraion.

The water was soft and warm. I was content not to be reminded of the secrets beneath it, but simply to swim: to float, leisurely and indolent with the sun drying onto my face; to be solitary.

This book is a collection of her visits to the country, there are stories of her exploring remote parts in the company of shepherds walking along tracks to the coast. She learns of the atrocities that took place during the war, of villages being burnt in reprisal for the smallest of misdemeanours. All around homes are being rebuilt and she talks to those that survived the massacre by running to the mountains. She has a couple of unsuccessful attempts at diving but prefers to stick with the snorkel

Even though the timeline was fragmented in this book as she visits Greece multiple times, it still worked for me. It gives a sense of her picking the pieces up of her life after losing her husband, travelling back to the place that she loved and rebuilding her life once again. What her writing does best for me is the detail she reveals of the places that she passes through and the people that she meets. It is evocative travel writing though and she captures the moments that the country is changing before and after the war.

2.5 out of 5 stars

Pearl hadn’t intended to end up in the river and she is not fully sure how she got there either. It might have been something to do with falling down the very dodgy stairs in her crumbling house. But she is in there.

Ada, Pearl’s daughter, had never expected to end back up in her mothers home again, in that rain-soaked valley and people that she wasn’t particularly looking forward to seeing after leaving them behind over a decade ago. The house is slowly succumbing to the relentless weather, the heating has failed and it is so damp that she can barely get a fire going.

Pepper has always followed her restless mother, Pearl, around from place to place as she sought somewhere to settle. She is a nomad too, but this house is full of things to discover, memories that she never knew she had from her past generations and there is that strange old woman who sits on the river bank with her feet in the cold water.

Pearl does not want to stay, this place has too many unhappy memories for her, but winter is coming and before they know it they are involved in life in the valley once again. They never thought that they would settle in one place, but things are changing, Pepper has calmed down and they feel they have a presence keeping an eye out for them both.

There were some parts of this that I liked, the writing is atmospheric and has wonderful descriptions of the river and the natural world outside the house. The three main characters, or two and a bit really… Pearl, Ada and Pepper are all independent and in some ways a bit dysfunctional way too, the way they interact and change as circumstances develop is the main point of the book. One problem that I did have with it was I kept thinking that Ada was the grandmother mother figure who permeates the book in all sorts of ways, but it was her daughter! There is precious little plot in here, and if you are after stories with a similar feel but with a bit more substance to them, I’d recommend Lanny or Elmet.

4 out of 5 stars

This is a house like no other, there seems to be an endless number of rooms whose walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues. It is alongside the sea and at certain times the tides fill the lower rooms sending booms through the labyrinth of rooms.

In this place lives a man called Piranesi. He has mapped the rooms in each direction and has favourite statues in some of them. He calculates when the tides will be high so he knows when to retreat to other parts for safety. Mostly he is alone, but once a week a man he calls The Other appears and speaks to him about what he has discovered in the past week. It is a life that he is happy with.

Except for one week, The Other says that someone else has found the way into this labyrinth. He warns Piranesi not to talk to them at all as the knowledge that they bring is dangerous. The very thought of his routines being disturbed is enough to panic Piranesi and that fear is magnified when he starts to find messages left from this intruder. He does his best to destroy them, but he sees snippets of what they are saying and he slowly begins to doubt all that he knows.

I found this to be a very strange tale indeed. Piranesi is the sole inhabitant of a series of thousands of rooms that are located on the coast somewhere. I much preferred it to Jonathan Strange and Dr Norrell which was far too overwritten in my opinion. In this book, the writing is taut as Clarke manages to paint scenes with a sparse number of words. It feels like a fantasy, to begin with, but as the plot unfolds it becomes much more sinister. It is very atmospheric too and one of the things that I also liked is that not everything is fully explained, so the conclusion of the story leaves lots to the imagination.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

We have perfected the tomato sauce that we make for all sorts of pasta dishes over the years. It is made by frying onions and garlic, adding oregano, then tomato puree and then passata and leaving it to cook down and reduce for around an hour. Finally, add basil and then it is ready to be married to the pasta of our choice.

Pasta without tomato sauce doesn’t feel right in some ways. But how the Italians ended up using tomatoes is a story worth telling. In this book, Massimo Montanari is delving through the history of the Italian kitchens with the intention of separating fact from myth.

Before the tomato, there was pasta. This iconic Italian food originated from the breadbasket of the middle east and was originally unleavened and rolled bread, however finding when it went from rehydrating a dried food to a cooking process in boiling water requires a little more uncovering.

Back then the fashion was to make sure that the pasta was really well cooked. And I mean really well, none of the modern fashion of having pasta al dente. Having cooked the pasta the chose accompaniment was cheese, lots of cheese and much deliberation was given to the correct one to use. Then in the mid-1500s, the tomato arrived in Italy, the Spanish having bought it back from South America. They were originally considered to be ‘harmful and obnoxious’. It would be a while before they made their entrance into Italian cooking and become the staple that they are today

I thought that this was a fascinating little book on a food that has become as much as a staple in our kitchen as it is all across Italy. Montanari’s prose is entertaining and informative in equal measure, and he shows just how a national dish can trace its roots back across many cultures. If you like your pasta, this is a great little read

3.5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

They say that money makes the world go round. It doesn’t, but it is the fuel and blood of the modern world. Unless you are off-grid and living in a self-sufficient way, almost everything that you need or want will involve a financial transaction of some form or other. Cash was once king, but since the pandemic, that has become less popular with the rise of contactless payments becoming the norm in almost all places now.

Payments to and from people and companies banks and governments are some staggering amount each and every day. It is constant and unremitting and we are utterly reliant of them and most importantly them never ever breaking down. If that were ever to happen for even a short time there would be a fairly large economic breakdown and for even a short period of time, there would be a partial or total breakdown in law and order.

But this system is beginning to change. Banks are slowly starting to lose control as the tech wizards see a money-making opportunity in the new disruptive technologies that they are starting to launch. Some of these are new ways of paying using the current way that money moves, but some are reimagining the actual form that money will take.

But how does it actually all work? And should I care anyway?

Leibbrandt and De Terán are very well versed in the hidden systems that keep our democracies alive and functioning. In this book they will take us through all manner of payment systems, from the origins of cash, how the first credit cards were made from cardboard and the detail was written out by hand for each transaction (can you imagine that now) and what the dawn of cryptocurrencies mean for us. Where there is money there are often criminals and they talk about the rise of fraud and the methods used to combat it as well as a chapter on the attempt by North Korea to steal $1billion dollars.

I thought this was an informative and accessible guide to the modern financial world. It had the right balance between the narrative story and details without getting too technical or full of incomprehensible jargon. Worth a read if the world of money feels too baffling.

For the first time this year, I finally heard the very weird sound that a nightjar makes. It is described as a churring, but it reminded me of the sound of the cicadas that you get all around the Mediterranean as the light fades. Another night singing bird that I am yet to hear is the nightingale. I have never been lucky enough to hear one. Yet. It is on the list to do at some point.

These birds fly up from Africa and as they arrive in Europe their night-time singing is one of the heralds of springtime. They have captivated people for thousands of years with their breathtaking songs. Sam Lee first came across them through folk songs. An accomplished musician in his own right, this connection that folk music had to the natural world felt right and helped him become deeply rooted in this music. He first heard a nightingale sing when he was invited by friends on a cool May evening to the Arlington Reservoir. As they walked to the edge he could hear something that didn’t sound right.

The birds seemed to breathe a musical condensation that dripped from the branches of the trees in inky deliquescence

They sat and listened for what felt like hours and they started to hear others responding to the song of the first one. They are small non-descript brown birds that are hiding in scrub and as it is nighttime when they are active, pretty impossible to spot. But his ears told him this was something magical, he was reduced to a childlike state, grinning inanely at the sound and he was beguiled and hooked.

It is the beginning of a journey that will take him back through the history books to the Greeks, discovering the places that they overwinter in Africa and tracing their influence in folk music, folklore and in the art they have inspired. This is quite a different take on the natural history books that are being released at the moment, rather than being a memoir about him, seen through the prism of the nightingale it is full of richly linked and intertwined anecdotes.

Whilst he is deeply concerned about the loss of the habitat that these magnificent singers need to be able to survive, there are strong links to his other interest which is saving old folk songs for posterity. I didn’t find the writing exceptional, but it is very readable and his enthusiasm for his feathered subject is limitless. What is exceptional though is his passion for these birds, along with the action he’s taking over the environment something that is very evident that he writes about in the epilogue.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

History at O level was one of the few that I passed waaaaay back when I took my exams. Thankfully I didn’t have to learn about the narrow political and regal landscape, but the history we learnt was the social changes through the ages and how they affected the population at large.

Now I have thought about it though almost all the people that we found out about were men, they built bridges, invented steam engines, robbed the common people of the land that had been theirs and shaped the country as we know it today. Sometimes they did a good job, but often they didn’t. There was the odd woman in this history that we were taught, but not many and they were portrayed as secondary figures.

In this book, Newman wants to set the record straight and tell us about the amazing women who have defied the odds to change a little bit of history for the better. She has chosen a wide range of women to celebrate what they do and to ensure that they are put back into the history books. These are not just women who have made a difference in medicine and education, but those who have become political giants, who have been actively involved in wars and developing engineering solutions and designing buildings.

There are too many to mention in this review, but three that I particularly liked discovering were Jane Drew who had her own architectural practice that, to begin with, only employed women and was not afraid to give as good as she got.
There was also Elizabeth Anderson who wanted to become a doctor. In the 1890s this was not the done thing, women were considered too sensitive for the anatomy lessons all doctors had to take. She enrolled as a nursing student, and was still getting rejection letters from everywhere she applied. She fought back and went on to form the New Hospital for Women.
Beatrice Shilling, whose ingenious and yet so simple device for the Spitfires’ Rolls-Royce V12 Merlin engines that stopped them cutting out during dogfights, was essential for the pilots as they fought in the battle of Britain. Not only did she invent it, but she travelled all around the airfields brazing the component in position for the pilots.

I really liked this book. Newman rightly so is trying to put the record straight and show that notable achievements were not just a male thing. All the women in this book had to push back against the values of society at the time and make a difference in their field of expertise. Rather than children learning about the stuffy and frankly mostly boring Kings and Queens of our country, the women in this book should be given equal prominence to the men that have shaped our future as their role is equal in importance.