ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
Latest editorial
Lewis folds love, war and politics in a memorably epic embrace
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
My Beautiful Imperial
by Rhiannon Lewis
(Victorina Press, £9.99)
“A FRAMED set of etchings and an old photograph album were almost all I had to go on when I began my research 20 years ago. Once I started, I was hooked. At every turn, the story became more incredible,” Rhiannon Lewis says in her epilogue to this novel, based on real people and events.
And what a story she's written. It tells of David Jefferson Davis, “Davy,” a young farmer living in rural Wales in the 1860s whose family life is suddenly torn apart by a tragic incident involving the death of his little sister Elen for which he is mistakenly blamed.
Forced to leave home and following in the steps of his father and grandfather before him, Davy embarks on a career at sea that eventually takes him all over the world.
Similar stories
19.01.1930-23.04.2026
Kate Clark pays tribute to Ricardo, whose life spanned the hopes of Allende’s Chile, the horrors of military dictatorship and decades of campaigning for justice in exile
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about a two-handed theatrical homage to jazz’s most mercurial musician
Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis