Did Ian Fleming’s secret wartime mission inspire Goldfinger?
Nicholas Shakespeare’s new biography, Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, digs into the 007 creator’s own experience of espionage
Nicholas Shakespeare’s new biography, Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, digs into the 007 creator’s own experience of espionage
In The Illusionist, Robert Hutton explores how Dudley Clarke invented an ingenious new playbook of military subterfuge
This edition, abridged by scholar Anjna Chouhan and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, manages to preserve astounding amounts of poetry
Sacha Lord’s memoir, Tales from the Dancefloor, runs from the dirty and criminal 1990s to the contemporary superclub scene
Caroline Burt & Richard Partington’s new book Arise, England is a terrific account of the Plantagenets who ruled for over 300 years
In her formidable history of the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act and its effects, Sarah Wise uncovers a staggering range of injustices
In her new novel, My Favourite Mistake, the Irish writer reunites us with Anna Walsh for a zippy tale of gentrification and high emotion
Trophy Lives, a superb book-length essay by Philippa Snow, dissects our relationship with the rich and famous – and why we can’t stop caring
In Not Your China Doll, a rich biography by Katie Gee Salisbury, Anna May Wong emerges as a thrilling actress and Asian-American trailblazer
Choice, Neel Mukherjee’s new book, dissects our moral and economic decisions via passages of often beautiful prose
Nuclear War, by Pulitzer-nominated Annie Jacobsen, uses interviews with security officials – and overblown prose – to narrate the apocalypse
Clare Pollard’s first children’s book, The Untameables, puts a fresh spin on the Camelot myth with an adventuring 10-year-old hero
Strike Up the Band is a spirited chronicle of the Roaring Twenties in New York City, but it fails to develop an integrated narrative
Guy de la Bédoyère’s rollicking new book, Populus, sweeps away the lofty and imperial, and revels in the mundane and absurd
In Four Stars, Joel Golby narrates his life via a string of reviews. It’s often sharp and affecting, but there are questions for the editors
Our Fight, the second memoir by former MMA champion Ronda Rousey, is a tale of industry norms that range from sad to frightening
In Jonathan Buckley’s wonderful 12th novel, Tell, a man’s life, times and bedroom antics are related by one garrulous member of his staff
Anne Somerset’s fascinating new book, Queen Victoria and the Prime Ministers, shows how the monarch clashed with successive governments
Never mind Dickens’s picaresque – Drew D Gray’s fascinating Nether World exposes the truth about the 19th-century criminal underworld
Caledonian Road, a sprawling satire, skewers the complacent middle classes with relish, but its taste for nastiness is not to its benefit