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
The Well Deceived
by Isaac Kuhnberg
(Clink Street Publishing, £9.99)
READING this novel is a little like singlehandedly putting a cover over a double duvet — a real struggle.
The pseudonymous author attempts to create a world marginally out of register with that of Britain in the 1950s and the reader is trapped for a time in a parlour game of working out what geographically is what, with Alba being Scotland-ish and Anglia England-ish.
HENRY BELL salutes a fine portrait of a revolutionary who remains a deeply significant and provocative figure
MARTIN HALL welcomes a plea for greater compassion between believer and non-believer via the framework of philosophical enquiry
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
JULIA THOMAS unpicks the mental processes that explain why book-to-film adaptations so often disappoint



