Lives and how to live them

Pulse Cynan Jones (Granta, £14.99) Saints Tim MacGabhann ...

The English House: A History in Eight Buildings ...

Dark tourist guides to America

I Suffer Therefore I Am: Portrait of the ...

ONE OF THE MOST GRIMLY FUNNY POEMS OF the past century is Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse,” with its opening salvo about how our parents invariably mess us up. Larkin used a saltier word for “mess,