I have two reviews from the past couple of weeks, I haven’t shared here yet…
The Fatal Tree by Jake Arnott
Jake Arnott’s novels are moving back in time. He started in the 1960s and 1970s with his Long Firm trilogy, (the first of which I reviewed here), then he moved back to WWII followed by the early years of the twentieth century. Now in his 7th book, we jump further back in time to the 18th century.
Whenever the setting though, you know with one of Arnott’s books that he will get the detail exactly right, evoking each era perfectly, and this is the case with The Fatal Tree. This is the time of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera and Gay appears in cameo, along with Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe and Alexander Pope, but we are not directly concerned with Gay’s tale of the man who was later known as Mack the Knife, (more of him later though).
Read my full review here.
The Ladybird Expert Series Vols 1-3
After the success of their spoof books for adults, Ladybird has come up with something completely different for older readers – a new series of serious ‘Expert’ books – Ladybird series 117(!) and this time featuring new artwork. The books retain the classic Ladybird structure of a page of text on the left and pictures on the right – around fifty pages in each book. The artwork is gloriously retro, echoing the original Ladybird house style but containing completely up to date information. The first three are all scientific titles, and in a publishing coup, Ladybird got HRH The Prince of Wales to co-author the first book on Climate Change…18th
