ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Revelatory history of a disunited kingdom
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
Divided Kingdom: A History of Britain from 1900 to the Present
by Pat Thane
(Cambridge University Press, £22.99)
ONE gets the impression from the number of books recently published about the history of Britain over the past century that many are fairly superficial rehashes of earlier work.
Original significant texts are very much the exception and, while Divided Kingdom falls into neither of these camps, it’s still strongly recommended as a clear, useful and detailed introduction in addressing the themes of period.
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