MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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Dispassionate, considered, forensic
TOM KING recommends a collection of acutely observed writings, from the personal to the political, by Hilary Mantel
MORDANT: Hilary Mantel
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
Mantel Pieces: Royal Bodies and Other Writing from the London Review of Books
by Hilary Mantel
(4th Estate, £16.99)
HILARY MANTEL, most famous for her epic Thomas Cromwell trilogy — Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light — first made a name for herself on the 1980s book-reviewing scene.
It was very different in those days, she writes, with more daily papers “and they made space for books.”
She wrote for the Listener, the Literary Review and, forgive her, the Spectator. But she found a home at the London Review of Books (LRB), for which she has written ever since.
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