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“... criticism of the series might be directed at the number of familiar names on the contents page: Barbara Trapido, Anthony Thwaite, Anne Stevenson, Alan Brownjohn, Helen Simpson, Andrew Motion, Michael Hofmann, Alan Sillitoe, Louis de Bernières and Geoff Dyer are ten of them, and ‘new’ isn’t the first word that springs to mind. But there are ...”

“... By the Western calendar, the events chronicled in Shusaku Endo’s latest novel take place between 1613 and 1624. But of course that is an artificial way of looking at the matter. Half the book takes place in Mexico and Europe; Endo has the cosmopolitan range of a partly ‘Westernised’ figure, educated in the Catholic faith. Nevertheless, the heart of the issue concerns Japan, ‘a wall with windows no larger than gunports, windows to keep an eye on those coming in, not to look out upon the wider world ...”

“... is going to make the best use of A.N: Wilson’s undoubted talent. We first meet Alice, heroine of Barbara Trapido’s third novel, while she’s still at school, and she retains a wide-eyed impressionability even when initiated into adult life. She’s amazed by the sudden arrival of Jem, insubordinate and outrageous, with a knowing precocity of ...”