You wouldn’t guess from the cover design—three songbirds silhouetted over swatches of picturesque Englishness—but Catherine Clarke’s A History of England in 25 Poems hits one of its sweet spots with a

Catherine Clarke A History of England in 25 Poems400pp. Allen Lane. £25. Mark Forsyth Rhyme and ReasonA short history of poetry and people (forpeople who don’t usually read poetry)368pp. Allen & Unwin

ny potential reader of A Glastonbury Romance is likely to be put off initially by its sheer size: this brick of a book runs to more than 1,100 pages, containing almost half a million words. Some autho

Alice Loxton EleanorA 200-mile walk in search of England’slost queen352pp. Pan Macmillan. £22. Many are commemorated in stone, but few so grandly as Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290). Following her unexpec

Charlotte Vosper In A Queer Inheritance, you explore histories of sexual difference connected to the National Trust. What drew you to those historical figures and their stories? Michael Hall That goes

This early 19th-century cottage in Padstow, owned by Jess and Ash Alken-Theasby, has lived a long and varied life. ‘It was originally a little fishing cottage, but it’s had several interesting uses si