CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
Latest editorial
Gripping life of football hero ahead of his time
Nicolas Lalaguna reviews Flying Over an Olive Grove
TONY BURKE speaks to JOEL McIVER, co-author of the biography of bluesman John Mayall
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
New releases from Javon Jackson, IZE Trio, and Mal Waldron Trio
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an intriguing multi-layered depiction, dominated by a stunning impersonation of Marilyn herself
EWAN CAMERON marvels at the impossible ambition, realised with dreamlike finesse of translating Italo Calvino to the stage
Flying Over an Olive Grove by Clive Nicholson, Ralph Nicholson and Mark Metcalf (Red Axe Books, £19.99)
FLYING Over an Olive Grove is the true story of a working-class boy who, as one of the greatest players of his time, went on to win every football prize going before he went on to coach around the world.
What makes it different from all the other football biographies is that Fred Spiksley was born in 1870, 15 years before the FA introduced professionalism into the sport.
Similar stories
JOE GILL marvels at the history of a highly complex nomadic and hunter/gatherer society without a hierarchical class system
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a pessimistic novel in which Hitler is removed from history, to little effect
HENRY BELL follows the lineage of revolutions, from the English to the Chinese, and asks where revolutionary politics exists today
BRENT CUTLER is intrigued by the imperialist, supremacist and contradictory history of a word that is used all too easily