Review of reviews: Books

Celebrating 100 years of the BBC Shipping Forecast, Jane Russell takes us on a series of coastal cruises through the forecast sea areas, exploring some of the special places on offer in each of them

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

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

Is this the age of dictators?” asked veteran journalist Sir Sidney Low. He was writing in September 1923, the month in which a military coup brought Miguel Primo de Rivera to power in Spain. At the sa

Jonathan Smith and Derek Gaunt Cornerstone Press, £22 T en years ago, former FBI negotiator Chris Voss wrote the bestselling Never Split the Difference, which detailed how techniques he had honed in d