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

A Queer Inheritance: Alternative Histories in the National ...

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

Lizzie Wade Apocalypse How catastrophe transformed our world and can forge new futures 320pp. William Collins. £20. Luke Kemp Goliath’s Curse The history and future of societal collapse 592pp. Viking.

Best books… Roy Foster The emeritus professor of ...

ince they were written almost a century ago, John Cowper Powys’s novels have lost none of their ability to amaze, inspire, horrify, perplex, and at times, disappoint. Although he liked to identify as