Tag: non-fiction

Review – Queer as Folklore

Posted September 30, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Queer as Folklore

Queer as Folklore

by Sacha Coward

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 346
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

Queer as Folklore takes readers across centuries and continents to reveal the unsung heroes and villains of storytelling, magic and fantasy. Featuring images from archives, galleries and museums around the world, each chapter investigates the queer history of different mythic and folkloric characters, both old and new.

Leaving no headstone unturned, Sacha Coward will take you on a wild ride through the night from ancient Greece to the main stage of RuPaul's Drag Race, visiting cross-dressing pirates, radical fairies and the graves of the 'queerly departed' along the way. Queer communities have often sought refuge in the shadows, found kinship in the in-between and created safe spaces in underworlds; but these forgotten narratives tell stories of remarkable resilience that deserve to be heard.

Join any Pride march and you are likely to see a glorious display of papier-mâché unicorn heads trailing sequins, drag queens wearing mermaid tails and more fairy wings than you can shake a trident at. But these are not just accessories: they are queer symbols with historic roots.

To truly understand who queer people are today, we must confront the twisted tales of the past and Queer as Folklore is a celebration of queer history like you've never seen it before.

I ended up finishing Sacha Coward’s Queer as Folklore quickly by skimming it, which is disappointing, but there were a number of red flags about his methodology/ability to back up his claims. For example, he gives us some quotations from a really crusty old translation of the Poetic Edda (from 1936):

 Then loud spoke Thrym, the giants’ leader:
‘Who ever saw bride more keenly bite?
I ne’er saw bride with a broader bite,
Nor a maiden who drank more mead than this!’

Thrym looked ‘neath the veil, for he longed to kiss,
But back he leaped the length of the hall:
‘Why are so fearful the eyes of Freyja?
Fire, methinks, from her eyes burns forth.’

And then announces, with absolutely no further evidence:

It is this comedic sequence of questioning Thor’s appearance while in drag that seems to have inspired the most famous part of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. Red Riding Hood famously says to the wolf, who is disguised as her grandmother, what big teeth she has, and what big eyes she has.

On what evidence, other than the questions being vaguely similar? Did Perrault know the Poetic Edda? Where is the evidence that these things have a direct connection? If it “seems to have inspired” ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, you’re going to need to provide some additional evidence backing that.

There are also some basic errors of fact, when he states that Carmilla (1872) was written before Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819). He talks about Carmilla, then Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’, and then immediately goes on to:

… both these depictions of female vampires predate Dracula, Nosferatu and even Polidori’s ‘Vampyre’ by a number of years.

No. No, not they don’t. ‘Christabel’ (1797) does predate Polidori (1819), but Carmilla (1872) does not. This is apparent through an extremely basic understanding of the flow of time: 1819 comes before 1872.

Either someone messed up his facts, or he failed to catch this glaring issue in any editing pass, and didn’t have an editor to notice it either. That’s… worrying.

There are some references and a bibliography, so it’s not as though this is so focused on a popular audience that it doesn’t seem necessary to provide citations and evidence to back up a claim, and even being focused on a popular audience wouldn’t excuse blatant errors.

Unfortunately, not one I can recommend, though I found it readable and — until I started feeling uncomfortable about his omission of any kind of evidence or sources for some of his assertions — entertaining.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

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Review – Infectious

Posted September 29, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 9 Comments

Review – Infectious

Infectious: Pathogens and How We Fight Them

by John S. Tregoning

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 384
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

Nature wants you dead.

Not just you, but your children and everyone you have ever met and everyone they have ever met; in fact, everyone. It wants you to cough and sneeze and poop yourself into an early grave. It wants your blood vessels to burst and pustules to explode all over your body. And – until recently – it was really good at doing this… Dr John S. Tregoning has dedicated his career to answering these questions. Infectious uncovers fascinating success stories in immunology and virology, making this book not only a vital overview of infection, but also a hopeful story of ongoing human ingenuity. Covid-19 may be only the first of many modern pandemics. The subject of infection and how to fight it grows more urgent every day. How do pathogens cause disease? And what tools can we give our bodies to do battle? The human body is a marvel – but what happens when it comes under attack? A fascinating guide to why we get sick and how we get better.

It’s worth me admitting up front that it might possibly be time for me to stop reading most popular science that focuses on immunity or disease. I used to find it soothing, but I’m a difficult audience to please now, since I’m not a layperson (MSc in Infectious Diseases), and so my enjoyment/interest tends to hinge on style.

Which is unfortunate in the case of John S. Tregoning’s Infectious, because I found his humour schoolboyish and annoying, and at times, inappropriate for the topic. Half of his footnotes are just terrible jokes, or explaining terrible jokes, and if his students laugh at them in his lectures then either he’s got a lot of in-person charisma or they’re sucking up. Or they’re laughing at him.

The first half of the book is excruciatingly simple from my perspective, which doesn’t help; it’s a decent enough primer for someone who knows just a little bit, though I’ve definitely read others put it across more interestingly. (Honestly, if it’s a primer you want, Philipp Dettmer’s Immune would be my recommendation.) The second half of the book is a bit better, though the whole is studded with some terrible opinions such as:

  • He doesn’t like wearing a mask, so he agrees with research that says masks don’t help prevent the spread of aerosolised infections (i.e. he explicitly admits to confirmation bias);
  • He’s had COVID, so he won’t have it again and he can relax about any precautions, and he won’t be able to spread it to anyone else (then proven wrong by his own afterword, where he admits to having caught COVID twice in a year);
  • Andrew Wakefield has only had to retract two papers, so his lies must be the result of “compounded error” and not blatant corruption (see Brian Deer’s The Doctor Who Fooled The World if you’re unsure on this front)…

I’ll stop, I’ll stop.

The book needed a firm and knowledgeable editor, and the paperback should have been updated to remove some of Tregoning’s more careless (and thus dangerous) predictions about COVID. There were some snippets of interest, and I appreciate his care to pick out neglected scientists (often women) whose work was not properly recognised in their time (or sometimes even now), and his calling-it-what-it-is about James Watson’s racism, etc.

On the other hand, instead of just omitting his “Nuns and Slappers” example, he mentioned that he couldn’t include it because of wokeness. So there’s that.

Altogether, when I look back on it, reading it was a chore and the new stuff I learned was very limited in nature (that the record amount of rice-water stool expelled during cholera infection is allegedly 80 litres, and that we allegedly don’t know how paracetamol or ketamine work; in this moment, I don’t even know if those things are true).

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

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Review – Crap

Posted September 26, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Crap

Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America

by Wendy A. Woloson

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 416
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Crap. We all have it. Filling drawers. Overflowing bins and baskets. Proudly displayed or stuffed in boxes in basements and garages. Big and small. Metal, fabric, and a whole lot of plastic. So much crap. Abundant cheap stuff is about as American as it gets. And it turns out these seemingly unimportant consumer goods offer unique insights into ourselves--our values and our desires.

In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America, Wendy A. Woloson takes seriously the history of objects that are often cynically-made and easy to dismiss: things not made to last; things we don't really need; things we often don't even really want. Woloson does not mock these ordinary, everyday possessions but seeks to understand them as a way to understand aspects of ourselves, socially, culturally, and economically: Why do we--as individuals and as a culture--possess these things? Where do they come from? Why do we want them? And what is the true cost of owning them?

Woloson tells the history of crap from the late eighteenth century up through today, exploring its many categories: gadgets, knickknacks, novelty goods, mass-produced collectibles, giftware, variety store merchandise. As Woloson shows, not all crap is crappy in the same way--bric-a-brac is crappy in a different way from, say, advertising giveaways, which are differently crappy from commemorative plates. Taking on the full brilliant and depressing array of crappy material goods, the book explores the overlooked corners of the American market and mindset, revealing the complexity of our relationship with commodity culture over time.

By studying crap rather than finely made material objects, Woloson shows us a new way to truly understand ourselves, our national character, and our collective psyche. For all its problems, and despite its disposability, our crap is us.

I’m a little torn on how to rate Wendy A. Woloson’s Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America. It’s very thorough, and well-sourced, with 50 pages of numbered end notes, an index, and lots of illustrative images (mostly black-and-white, with a small section of colour plates). The topic is interesting, and somewhat applicable to what I see in the UK too, but it’s lacking a little enthusiasm: I don’t need it to be any kind of memoir, but this feels a touch on the dry academic side.

It’s also a bit repetitive. The chapters/sections are themed, e.g. one on useless gadgetry (though it includes electric toothbrushes, now recommended heavily by dentists, in the category of useless gadgetry? Not entirely sure why, it was a throwaway comment but one which puzzled me), one on free gifts, etc… But that means some comments about the Depression’s affect on the accrual of “crap” feel a bit repetitive, as the trends are usually very similar.

Overall, I think my conclusion is that this was interesting to reflect on, and definitely well presented and sourced, but a bit dry and slow for casual reading, so more for someone who’s interested in quite a serious take on the topic.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – First Light

Posted September 24, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – First Light

First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time

by Emma Chapman

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 304
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe's history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies, and even to visualising an actual black hole. There's a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe.

This brief but far-reaching period in the Universe's history, known to astrophysicists as the 'Epoch of Reionisation', represents the start of the cosmos as we experience it today. The time when the very first stars burst into life, when darkness gave way to light. After hundreds of millions of years of dark, uneventful expansion, one by the one these stars suddenly came into being. This was the point at which the chaos of the Big Bang first began to yield to the order of galaxies, black holes and stars, kick-starting the pathway to planets, to comets, to moons, and to life itself.

Incorporating the very latest research into this branch of astrophysics, this book sheds light on this time of darkness, telling the story of these first stars, hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times brighter, lonely giants that lived fast and died young in powerful explosions that seeded the Universe with the heavy elements that we are made of. Emma Chapman tells us how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers a first-hand look at the immense telescopes about to come on line to peer into the past, searching for the echoes and footprints of these stars, to take this period in the Universe's history from the realm of theoretical physics towards the wonder of observational astronomy.

It turns out that I am still not great with astrophysics. Emma Chapman is enthusiastic and keen and tries to enthuse the reader, but my eyes just started to glaze over as First Light dug deeper into the detection methods, types of stars, etc, etc. There are important mysteries discussed here, stuff that it would be monumental for humanity to understand — but I won’t be the human understanding them, I’m pretty certain!

It could be that Chapman’s explanations aren’t great, but that’s hard to judge, when I know this isn’t my field or interest. There were bits I found interesting, mostly the less technical stuff, but whenever she started talking about wavelengths, I was a goner.

I will say that I did find some of her extended metaphors a bit annoying/random. I know she was trying to add colour and interest, but I didn’t need the metaphor of cooking Christmas dinner for a full family to understand that launching a complex telescope is difficult. I’d rather just hear about the telescope, thanks.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Medieval Bodies

Posted September 19, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Medieval Bodies

Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages

by Jack Hartnell

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 352
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love and had children. And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different to our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule.

In this richly-illustrated and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves in the Middle Ages, from Constantinople to Cairo and Canterbury. Unfolding like a medieval pageant, and filled with saints, soldiers, caliphs, queens, monks and monstrous beasts, it throws light on the medieval body from head to toe - revealing the surprisingly sophisticated medical knowledge of the time in the process.

Bringing together medicine, art, music, politics, philosophy and social history, there is no better guide to what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages.

Jack Hartnell’s Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages is a very attractive book, with in-line colour illustrations. It’s definitely aimed at a pretty casual audience, with little by the way of referenced sources: mostly it’s a conversation with the author, in chapters arranged by theme (skin, feet, heart, etc) with various pieces of art and discussions of medicine that illuminate little pieces of how medieval people viewed the world.

I found it a bit shallow and random at times, because it tries to cover a lot of ground and cover things the author finds especially interesting, and it kind of feels like there’s no throughline that brings it all together beyond curiosity. Which is laudable, don’t get me wrong, but means there’s not so much of a solid narrative to get you through the book and link things up.

Being fair, there is a bibliography at the back if you want to try to look up sources, and it is beautifully presented! Just doesn’t quite come together, at least for me.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – It’s The End of the World

Posted September 16, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – It’s The End of the World

It's the End of the World: But What Are We Really Afraid Of?

by Adam Roberts

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 202
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

A trailblazing and highly topical look at how - and why - we imagine the world is going to end.

Are we doomed? Is an almighty power or an earth-shattering meteor waiting for us just around the corner?

In this thought-provoking book, Professor Adam Roberts explores our many different cultural visions of the end of the world - likely and unlikely, mundane and bizarre - and what they say about how we see ourselves and our societies. What is it is that we are really afraid of? An uncaring universe; an uncontrollable environment; the human capacity for destruction; or just our own, personal apocalypse - our mortality?

From last man and dying earth fiction to zombies swarming on screen and the ruined landscapes of immersive gaming, via sweeping contagions, invading aliens, falling bombs and rising robots, buckle up for the end of the world.

I felt like Adam Roberts’ It’s The End of the World: But What Are We Really Afraid Of? was less insightful than I’d hoped. It uses a few examples per chapter to discuss various kinds of apocalypse stories and why we’re fascinated by them, but it mostly seemed pretty obvious — though this might in part be due to my background in literature, so it may be more exciting/surprising to someone who hasn’t really explored the idea before.

I think Roberts should proooobably stay in his lane, though, since he opines on epidemiology without apparently doing any research, suggesting that globalisation reduces the risks of disease spreading:

As the global population increases, and as globalisation mixes up populations, epidemics have less bite, thanks to a better understanding of how to prevent the spread of disease, and the twinned healthcare countermeasures of immunisation and the improved treatment of those who fall sick.

The global population increase contributes to people being packed in closer together in cities, which makes epidemics more risky. The mixing of populations increases the risk of transmission between groups that wouldn’t have formerly come into contact. The expansion and mobility of the population encroaches further and further on the remaining “wild” areas, which lead to people being more in contact with animals who may harbour zoonotic diseases. We don’t have vaccines for diseases we’ve never encountered before, and those definitely still exist. We don’t have good treatments for many of the diseases we already know about, let alone ones we’ve never encounted or have never encountered at scale.

He’s just wrong in basically every way to say this, and he should probably stick to literary criticism rather than casually spread misinformation. He also later says that:

No plague will kill 4,999 out of every 5,000 humans — as we’ve seen [from SARS-CoV-2], even if the numbers are high, in terms of percentage of population it’s likely to be very low.

I don’t want to get on my soapbox for too long about a short chapter in a short book about science fiction, but I feel like this kind of pronouncement is so naive and such a threat that it needs calling out every single time. SARS-CoV-2 didn’t prove that there will never be a more dangerous pandemic. That we’ve survived this one doesn’t mean we’ll survive the next.

So, overall a bit disappointing, this one. By the nature of the beast, he also missed out many really great examples, but I wouldn’t ding him for that; mostly I just feel that it didn’t go very deep into this stuff, and that he should stay in his lane.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – The Postal Paths

Posted September 12, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Postal Paths

The Postal Paths: Rediscovering Britain's Forgotten Routes - And the People Who Walked Them

by Alan Cleaver

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 284
Synopsis:

'Seeing the hills, the crofts, villages and ruins only tells half the story. The people who worked, walked, lived and died here are the other half.'

Postal paths span the length and breadth of Britain - from the furthermost corners of the Outer Hebrides to the isolated communities clinging to the cliffs of the Rame Peninsula in south-east Cornwall. For over 200 years, postmen and women have delivered post to homes across Britain on foot, no matter how remote.

A chance remark by a farmer about a Postman's Path led Alan Cleaver on a quest to discover more about this network of lanes, short-cuts and footpaths in the British landscape. From the rolling fells of Cumbria to Kent's shingle coast, he walked in the footsteps of 20th Century posties. And what he found, through conversation and painstaking research, was not just beautiful scenery. It was an incredible, forgotten slice of social history - the tales and toil of rural postmen and women trudging down lanes, over fields, and even across rivers to make sure the post always came on time.

From women like Hannah Knowles, who began her job delivering letters in 1912 and would only miss three days through illness over the next 62 years of service, to a WW1 veteran who completed his 9-mile delivery route on one leg, Postal Paths paints a vivid picture of people who not only served communities but brought them together, one letter at a time.

Alan Cleaver’s The Postal Paths is a bit of a walking memoir, a bit of a history of the work of rural postal workers in the years before bikes and vans, when it was a long, long walking round and the postie often sold stamps along the way, popped in for a chat with farmers at isolated farmhouses, etc.

Cleaver is at pains to demonstrate the love their communities had for them, and often the love they had for the work, though this inevitably paints a rather rosy picture. He does discuss a couple of postal workers who advocated for better treatment, but even so, they were still dedicated postal workers — almost as though it was more a calling than a job. No doubt for some it was, and for some it wasn’t; the sources here are pretty biased, I’d say.

He discusses some of the routes, which are hopefully easier to follow by looking them up online; in this book there are no maps or simple directions, but rather long discussions of his thoughts and feelings while walking a particular route. At times he’s a bit sanctimonious about walking and handwritten letters, which grates as a reader who likes both but understands that there’s a lot of privilege in having the time, energy, physical fitness and money.

Still, the pleasure he takes in the research and the walking is clear, and those who enjoy walking memoir type stuff might enjoy it even without an interest in postal history. I’m not as sure the same is true the other way round; it felt like it leaned heavily toward the descriptions of walking the paths, at least in some chapters.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Rebel Bodies

Posted September 11, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Rebel Bodies

Rebel Bodies: A Guide to the Gender Health Gap Revolution

by Sarah Graham

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 288
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

An inclusive and empowering manifesto for change in women's healthcare - exploring the systemic and deep rooted sexism within medicine, and offering actionable ways for women to advocate for ourselves and others and get the diagnosis and treatment we need.

Have you ever been to a doctor and felt like you were being fobbed off or ignored? Did they belittle or overlook your concerns about your health? Ever been told you're just 'hormonal'? You're not alone.

Women make up 51 per cent of the population and are the biggest users of healthcare services - for themselves and as mothers and carers. But all the research shows there are massive gender differences in men and women's healthcare. Our pain and suffering has been disbelieved; we are misdiagnosed and not trusted to make informed choices about our own bodies.

As women speak out about their experiences of gaslighting and misdiagnosis, health journalist Sarah Graham investigates what it will take to bridge the gender health gap. Meet the patients, doctors and campaigners who are standing up and fighting back, and find practical tips on advocating for your own health. Be inspired by stories that will incite and offer hope.

You're not alone, you're not going mad, and we believe you.

Sarah Graham’s Rebel Bodies is an inclusive discussion of the problems with gendered healthcare in the UK — not just the issues women face in receiving appropriate care, but also the issues for trans, non-binary and intersex people. In several instances she focuses on the specific issues for black women and people who don’t speak much English, as well, and includes the perspectives of a whole range of people.

It’s a really validating read if you’ve suffered similar — for example, like myself being treated with antidepressants for gallstones, and not being trusted to even manage my own asthma care (unlike most patients, my own experience of my asthma is routinely ignored, I am not permitted to have a peak flow meter to monitor how well my treatment is working, and I am not trusted to comply with my own medication) — and offers some resources and advice. If you’ve had cause to navigate the system already, there’s probably not a lot new here, but it’s still interesting and useful to be validated.

(It was a little less validating to read someone comparing endometriosis to asthma, suggesting that their asthma gets treated properly because it’s non-gendered, because that isn’t my experience. I recognise that they weren’t saying “female-bodied people never have trouble getting proper treatment for asthma”, but the comparison was still a little bitter.)

I’d say this is a good resource for people in the UK, but a lot of the discussion is very specific to the UK. There are absolutely parallels in other countries, and some of the ideas about self-advocacy are useful, but a lot of the problems discussed are reinforced (and sometimes created) by our health system, and as such isn’t applicable. I’d say it has much lower utility for people in other countries, which is worth bearing in mind.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – 100 Dresses

Posted September 7, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – 100 Dresses

100 Dresses

by The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Genres: Fashion, History, Non-fiction
Pages: 232
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

An irresistible look into more than 300 years of fashion through an exquisite collection of designer dresses

What woman can resist imagining herself in a beautiful designer dress? Here, for the first time ever, are 100 fabulous gowns from the permanent collection of the renowned Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, each of which is a reminder of the ways fashion reflects the broader culture that created it.

Featuring designs by Paul Poiret, Coco Chanel, Madame Gr s, Yves Saint Laurent, Gianni Versace, Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, and many others, this one-of-a-kind collection presents a stunning variety of garments. Ranging from the buttoned-up gowns of the late 17th century to the cutting-edge designs of the early 21st, the dresses reflect the sensibilities and excesses of each era while providing a vivid picture of how styles have changed--sometimes radically--over the years. A late 1600s wool dress with a surprising splash of silver thread; a large-bustled red satin dress from the 1800s; a short, shimmery 1920s dancing dress; a glamorous 1950s cocktail dress; and a 1960s minidress--each tells a story about its period and serves as a testament to the enduring ingenuity of the fashion designer's art.

Images of the dresses are accompanied by informative text and enhanced by close-up details as well as runway photos, fashion plates, works of art, and portraits of designers. A glossary of related terms is also included.

100 Dresses is a very shallow overview of some of the dresses held by The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and as such is obviously a very narrow selection. It’s heavy on some individual designers (like Dior) and surprisingly light on others (Vionnet), and it’s not like there’s a lot of details about any given dress or designer, but it’s still a fun quick read.

Despite the short blurbs for each dress, there are some fascinating details — I particularly boggled at the dress with probably hundreds of pleats, pressed rather than stitched into place, which would need to be returned to the designer for the pleats to be re-set if it got damp or just crushed with wear.

Not exactly a groundbreaking volume, but enjoyable.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – The Paper Chase

Posted September 5, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – The Paper Chase

The Paper Chase: The Printer, The Spymaster & The Hunt for the Rebel Pamphleteers

by Joseph Hone

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 272
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

In the summer of 1705, a masked woman knocked on the door of David Edwards’s London workshop. She did not leave her name, only a package and a coded means of identifying her courier.

Edwards was a Welsh printer working in the dark confines of Nevill’s Alley, outside the city walls. The package was an illegal, anonymous pamphlet: The Memorial of the Church of England. The argument it proposed threatened to topple the government, but sedition sold well in the coffeehouses of Fleet Street and the woman promised protection. Edwards swiftly set about printing and surreptitiously distributing the pamphlet.

Parliament was soon in turmoil and government minister Robert Harley launched a hunt for all those involved. When Edwards was nowhere to be found, his wife was imprisoned and the pamphlet was burnt in his place. The printer was not the only villain, though, and Harley had to find the unknown writers who wished to bring the government down.

Full of original research, The Paper Chase tears through the backstreets of London and its corridors of power as Edwards’s allegiances waver and Harley’s grasp on parliament threatens to slip. Amateur detectives and government spies race to unmask the secrets of the age in this complex break-neck political adventure. Joseph Hone shows us a nation in crisis through the fascinating story of a single incendiary document.

Joseph Hone’s The Paper Chase: The Printer, The Spymaster, and the Hunt for the Rebel Pamphleteers digs into the publication and censorship of a very particular pamphlet published in 1705 by a Welsh printer working in London, David Edwards. It’s actually available online via the Open Library, if you’re curious to get a look at it.

Joseph Hone paints a vivid picture of the world of illicit printing and its dangers through the reception of the Memorial, and David Edwards’ run from the law. Much of the book focuses on the government minister, Robert Harley, and his attempts to find and punish the authors of the Memorial; this somewhat makes sense as a choice because the best evidence is what Harley had in his hands, with the true authors of the Memorial probably eventually correctly identified, but not through books and papers of their own. (At least, if they exist then Hone doesn’t discuss them at all.)

On the other hand, it means that the narrative is pretty much on Robert Harley’s side — the side of censorship. It does sympathise somewhat with Edwards, whose life and livelihood were threatened while the influential writers of the pamphlet hid (after assuring him of their protection when he agreed to print it for them)… but mostly it follows Harley’s efforts to track down the perpetrators. The tone is anti-Whig, pro-Tory, pro-censorship, I think; perhaps that was somewhat forced upon the author by the angle he used to get at the whole thing and examine evidence, but… Hmm. In general, the heavily fictionalised narrative lends itself to all manner of bias.

In addition, it’s a little awkward to follow up on everything, because although there are notes, the book lacks numbered footnotes, and the bibliography is in the form of a bibliographic essay. I admit, I didn’t dig into that at all, other than looking up the Memorial for myself and a couple of historical facts.

It’s not all negative or ambivalent; I found the first half a little slow, as I tried to get my head around the period (which I don’t know very well), but the second half was pretty good. Mary Edwards (the printers’ wife) seemed pretty awesome, a determined investigator and advocate for her husband, though I wish there’d been more to know about the other women in the case (the woman in the vizard mask who took the material to David Edwards’ press to print, or the servant who was with her). It can be difficult to tell the fiction from the fact, but it was still an interesting read, bearing that in mind.

I’m a bit torn on how to rate it, so definitely bear in mind my caveats.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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