Messer Marco Polo by Donn Byrne (1921)

Messer Marco Polo is one of those special finds which every bibliophile lives for: a book which can be consumed in one sitting but is unique enough for you to impress fellow bibliophiles with, thus providing the opportunity to sound well-read with very minimal effort. The conversation may go like this: ‘Yeah, read this book…

Moll: The Life & Times of Moll Flanders by Sian Rees

In The Life & Times of Moll Flanders, Sian Rees retraces the story of one of fiction’s most infamous, intriguing and oft-misrepresented heroines to reveal how thin the line between fiction and reality can really be. It’s 20 years (eek) since I read Moll Flanders during the summer holiday between GCSEs and A-levels. It has…

The Life and Death of Emily Wilding Davison by Ann Morley with Liz Stanley (1988), with Gertrude Colmore’s The Life of Emily Davison (1913)

Us Brits go to the polls today to choose who can f*ck things up the least for the next five years. It’s easy to feel despondent about the state of democracy on our fair isle right now – what with the impact of misleading media spin, the assumption that in ‘safe’ boroughs one’s vote makes…

Titanic Lives: Migrants and Millionaires, Conmen and Crew by Richard Davenport-Hines

As a seven-year-old I was obsessed with the story of the Titanic, prompted, I’m told, by the publicity surrounding the opening of a safe recovered from the wreck in 1987. My dad bought me a (still) great book by Dr Robert D. Ballard, the professor of oceanography who located the wreck in 1985, and I repeatedly…