MATTHEW HAWKINS witnesses a contemporary ballet that represents human life as subjected to artificial intelligence
As well as being an emerging fiction writer of considerable talent, Jonathan Hicks is also head teacher at a Cardiff comprehensive and a military historian.
As such, he's as well entitled as any to voice his doubts about the perils of next year's centenary marking the start of the conflict.
"I do come across well-intentioned folk who want to turn commemoration and remembrance into something akin to popular entertainment," he tells me.
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
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a pessimistic novel in which Hitler is removed from history, to little effect
FIONA O’CONNOR questions the achievement of this year’s Orwell prize winner for political fiction
In his fortnightly Borderlands column, MARK SEDDON visits overgrown forts along Offa’s Dyke and reflects on wars past and present



