When Donald Trump talks of “poisoning the blood of our country” he is “channelling Hitler”, according to Gavin Evans, author of White Supremacy: From Eugenics to Great Replacement (Icon) – a deeply disturbing book that picks apart the dangerous, unscientific ideas behind racism. In his shocking opening chapter, Evans details the mass killing of 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York in 2022, and traces how manipulated beliefs can inspire alt-right killings. The book, incidentally, also covers the murder of British MP Jo Cox. White Supremacy is a grim but important book.
The lives of four groundbreaking women – Marie de France, Julian of Norwich, Christine de Pizan and Margery Kempe – are explored with great verve by Dr Hetta Howes in Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women (Bloomsbury), as the historian explains why they all, in very different ways, pushed back against the limitations placed on them by society.
A hearty recommendation for Robert McCrum’s The Penalty Kick: The Story of a Gamechanger (Notting Hill Editions), which tells the story of football’s most dramatic sanction: the penalty kick. The game-changing rule was first proposed by William McCrum, an amateur Irish goalkeeper and the author’s great-grandfather, and introduced in 1891. McCrum’s book is a fine social history of football and an original look at football’s frequently defining moments of high-stakes risk and chance.
Finally, two large-size books that will bring constant “dipping-into” pleasure are Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock’s Webb’s Universe: The Space Telescope Images That Reveal Our Cosmic History (Michael O’Mara), which is full of intriguing explanations and stunning images, and Simon Bradley’s Bradley’s Railway Guide: A Journey Through Two Centuries of British Railway History, 1825-2025 (Profile Books), which is a superb history of what is the oldest railway system in the world.
Novels by Andrew Miller, Xan Brooks and Ali Smith, and non-fiction books about nature, fashion and the Second World War, are reviewed in full below.
England: A Natural History by John Lewis-Stempel ★★★★☆
John Lewis-Stempel, a highly respected nature writer, meanders around England in his erudite and highly informative England: A Natural History. The 12 chapters – Estuary (Thames); Park (Richmond), Downs (Mount Caburn); Beechwood (Burnham Beeches); River (The Wye); Field (Herefordshire); Village (Helpston, Cambridgeshire); Moor (Spaunton); Lake (Crummock Water); Heath (Isle of Purbeck); Fen and Broad (Norfolk) and Coast (Portreath, Cornwall) – are packed with humorous, quirky details.
Among the many wonderful things to learn about are that smelt used to be fished in the Thames, about the prolific farting of the deer of Richmond Park (and that Shakespeare was apparently a “thrill-poacher” of deer), about the strange history of the beech nut and the fact that Lewis-Stempel, a traditional farmer, rubs factor 30 suncream into pale-skinned pigs to prevent them getting sunburn.
I also learned about the true character of rabbits. Did you, like me, think of rabbits as fluffy and cuddly? In fact, rabbit society is strictly hierarchical and female rabbits will kill the kits of rivals by dragging them by the scruff of their necks to the surface to perish. What’s up, doc?
There were less palatable sections to read, too, especially the “rivercide” mix of chemical spillage and sewage that is despoiling the 155-mile River Wye. “River days are good days”, remarks the author, recalling memories of cleaner and happier bucolic days for England’s waterways.
Lewis-Stempel’s latest book should make a brilliant gift for anyone who loves the countryside.
England: A Natural History by John Lewis-Stempel is published by Doubleday on 3 October, £25
The Catchers by Xan Brooks ★★★★☆
The Catchers is set in 1927 and in part deals with the exploitation of Deep South Black musicians by white-owned record companies, at a time when a hit single earned small fortunes. In Brooks’s excellent novel, rookie song-catcher John Coughlin – one of the men who unearthed the unknown musicians, paid them a small one-off fee and returned to New York with their recorded work – is advised by an old pro (in terms that brought to mind a Death of a Salesman) to: “suck out the juice, pay your money and throw the pulp to the kerb”.
When Coughlin hears of a hugely talented teenage guitarist called Moss Evans, running bootleg liquor in the Mississippi delta, he sets off on an epic road trip to find him and record his magical music. He heads to the Deep South (a “savage country, pitiless and arbitrary”) just as a biblical storm brings death and destruction. The resulting road trip is full of strange and dangerous confrontations.
Brooks’s novel is hugely atmospheric, neatly capturing an era when it feels like “everything is accelerating”, and it brings to life a world of hustlers looking for the gold rush of a hit song in captivating style. The story is full of vivid, shocking characters – The Troller, Colonel Bird, the feral Grady Boys – and memorable descriptions (“straight-backed old women with windfall apple faces”.
The pulsating plot rattles along, rather like Coughlin’s old automobile, but this is also a tale with potent and disturbing things to say about profiteering and the racism that blights America. Brooks captures the magic of the music but leaves you fearing that reformed thief Coughlin is simply another “trader in flesh”.
The Catchers by Xan Brooks is published by Salt on 15 October, £10.99
Icons of Style: In 100 Garments by Josh Sims ★★★☆☆
