PICK OF THE PAPERBACKS
Fiction
Cecilia by Fanny Burney (Virago, £6.95) First published in 1782, this long but easy-toread novel proved an inspiration for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Stylistically the two couldn't be more different.
Dodo: An Omnibus by EF Benson (Hogarth, £3.95) Building on the success of Channel 4's Mapp and Lucia, this collection of stories set in a bygone age of privilege, frivolity and carelessness is blessed with a wonderful introduction by Mapp herself, actress Prunella Scales.
Fabled Shore: From the Pyrenees to Portugal by Rose Macaulay (OUP, £4,95) An elegant and polished account of the author's travels along the Catalonian, Valencian, Andalucian and Algarve shores, from the Pyreness to Portugal. First published in 1949, this reissue will please all fans of Rose Macaulay — who can count Bruce Kent amongst their number.
Fountains in the Sand by Norman Douglas (OUP, £3,95) Back further in time, now to Tunisia, in 1912 and a "philosophic donkey",
sandstorms, burning winds, freezing nights — all brought to live with a flowery writerly flourish.
Travellers' Health by Richard Dawood (OUP, £6.95) And now right bang up to date — and how to stay healthy when faced by all those foreign temptations. Rather gruesome reading on the eve of a departure to sunnier climes, I have to say.
Verse
Contemporary Irish Poetry, edited by Paul Muldoon, (Faber, £5,95) Starting with the death of Yeats, this collection seeks out similar genius in the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, Thomas Kinsella and Louis MacNiece amongst others. Political Verse, edited by Tom Paulin (Faber, £8.95) Poetry and its role in mirroring the political world as seen through the eyes of Milton. Wordsworth, Blake, Dante, Rimbaud — the list goes on and on.
History
The Weller Way by Alan McDonald (Faber, £2.95) This account is of how a group of Liverpool people fought every inch of the way to leave their run down "Coronation Street" style homes for brand new accommodation in a development planned by themselves around their needs. With a foreword by the Prince of Wales.
Peter Fleming