Enjoy Life

April 2025 book reviews

The pick of the latest hardbacks and paperbacks, reviewed by Simon Evans 

Exterminate/Regnerate, by John Higgs

If ratings for the most recent season are anything to go by then the time-travelling hero known as The Doctor, aka (erroneously) Doctor Who, might be due an extended, or permanent, rest.

Esteemed cultural commentator John Higgs doesn’t think so, however. He rather liked last year’s overblown ragbag of stories produced by show-runner Russell T Davies, and sees the Time Lord’s future stretching far into the future.

Fans of a certain age would beg to differ. Many reluctantly parted company with the good Doctor years ago and now can only watch from behind the sofa as the show they once loved is traduced and eviscerated. They fear that in their rush to grab the coveted 18-30 demographic Davies and his Disney paymasters are in danger of losing sight of what made the series so special in the first place.

Which is where Higgs’ book comes in, providing not just a history of the TV series but also an examination of what has made it so enduring. Not only is the show able, thanks to its unique format, to constantly reinvent itself, but it also has an uncanny ability to weave its way into the lives of its creators – and vice versa.

Higgs has much to say of interest about the show’s continuous evolution and the book is full of fascinating biographical detail about many of the key players. As to the future of the show, Higgs is on less certain ground. Defending the low ratings for the 2024 series as being symptomatic of the age of streaming simply doesn’t wash, given that the David Tennant-fronted specials of the year before pulled in twice as many viewers. There’s clearly an audience still there, just one who don’t want their intelligence insulted by farting spaceships, snot monsters and cheesy song and dance routines. Whether the good Doctor can escape from the social media-led rabbit hole he appears to have disappeared down may prove to be his biggest challenge yet.

Published by W&N Price £25 Pages 464 ISBN 9781399614771

Men of a Certain Age, by Kate Mossman

Drawn from her in-depth interviews for the New Statesman and late-lamented The Word this constantly surprising book chronicles the music journalist’s singular obsession with ageing rock stars, everyone from ageing roué Kevin Ayers and ‘rock cartoons’ John Lydon, Kiss and Shaun Ryder, to the ever enigmatic Ray Davies and wonderfully eccentric Terence Trent D’Arby.

Some of the most interesting encounters occur early on, when Kate recalls her long-time obsession with two of her subjects, Roger Taylor of Queen and the great Glen Campbell, but for me the most fascinating was her extended piece on Paul O’Neill, the man behind rock’s first franchise operation, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, an American rock band that, eight years after O’Neill’s death, still performs an odd mixture of progressive rock and Christmas music to a vast audience, mainly drawn from middle America.

As with the best interviews in the book, Mossman gets to the very heart and soul of her subject, a rare gift, and one that makes this book rather special for anyone who admires these ageing rock legends.

Published by Nine Eight Books Price £22 Pages 352 ISBN 9781788705646

The Liar, by Louise Jensen

Revelations rain down in this absorbing new stand-alone thriller from the best-selling psychological thriller writer, with uneasy domesticity giving way to fear and foreboding as a family laden down with secrets gradually unravels. Jensen carefully plants narrative depth charges along the way, culminating in a shocking, and completely unexpected, final quarter.

Published by HQ Price £9.99 Pages 350 ISBN 9780008508586

John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs, by Ian Leslie

The Beatles story has been told so many times that it has acquired the status of myth, so what new is there that can be said? Well, Ian Leslie has found something, focussing on the relationship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the creative powerhouses of the group, which he likens to a love story that expressed itself in song. It’s a clever conceit, that takes us from their first awkward meeting, through the heyday of The Beatles, their personal and artistic estrangement through to Lennon’s murder, but it wouldn’t have worked if Leslie didn’t have valuable insights into this complex friendship and the remarkable music the two pals produced, together and alone. For that reason it may be the best book about the Beatles since Ian McDonald’s Revolution In The Head, and that is high praise indeed.

Published by Faber and Faber Price £25 Pages 432 ISBN 9780571376117

The Crime Writer, by Diane Jeffrey

When his wife Leah goes missing, suspicion falls on crime writer Matthew Walsh, especially as the disappearance has similarities with his most recent novel. But after five years the trail goes cold, until a discovery changes everything. Local journalist Gabriel Conti covered the original case and befriended Matthew; now there’s a chance to make a name for herself and get to the bottom of what really happened. But at what cost? Cleverly plotted with engaging characters this will keep you gripped right up to the final enigmatic twist.

Published by HQ Price £9.99 Pages 304 ISBN 9780008735579

Yoko, by David Sheff

She was the woman who broke up the Beatles, the dragon lady who bewitched John Lennon and sent him ‘all weird’, recruiting him for her bizarre art projects and unlistenable albums. Even after Lennon’s death a slew of muck-raking books portrayed her as a cold, manipulative drug addict, whose famous husband had been become an artistically barren, somnambulant recluse.

Gradually, however, her life and art has undergone a radical re-evaluation, a series of highly regarded exhibitions and cutting edge musical projects, along with her careful curation of Lennon’s legacy, leading to Yoko being lauded as a feminist icon, pioneering avant-garde artist and, perhaps most strange of all, a best-selling dance music avatar at the tender age of 90.

David Sheff first met Yoko when he was commissioned to interview John and Ono for Playboy magazine, just weeks before Lennon’s murder, and it is this period in Yoko’s life that is inevitably the most powerful. Sheff witnessed first-hand the unimaginable grief Yoko endured following her husband’s murder, as well as her slow road to recovery – as with other traumatic periods in her life she found solace in work.

Although generally laudatory, Yoko’s ruthless side sometimes intrudes – her lover of 20 years discovering the relationship was over when the locks were changed on Yoko’s Dakota apartments. Given her traumatic early life, well documented by Sheff, that could be forgiven – in the aftermath of the bombing of Tokyo, Yoko and her siblings were so hungry that she told them to imagine they were eating an ice-cream. Sound familiar? And it’s that touching, if naïve, faith in the ability of the human spirit to imagine a better world, whatever the odds, that will be Yoko’s enduring legacy, even as she lives out her final days in quiet seclusion.

Published by Simon and Schuster Price £25 Pages 384 ISBN 9781398517530

Also available…

In Bombing Hitler’s Hometown (August Books, £12.99) retired CIA officer Mike Croissant tells how the courageous men of the US Fifteenth Air Force – including his uncle – resisted wave after wave of German anti-aircraft battery attacks to bombard Linz, one of Germany’s most valued assets, and the town Hitler described as home. And Max Arthur’s Lost Voices of the Dambusters Raid, newly reissued by August books (£12.99), is the definitive oral history of the devastating 1943 raids on the German Ruhr Valley, including contributions from Mission Commander Guy Gibson and Bouncing Bomb creator Barnes Wallis…

The Pen Is Mightier (Oldcastle Books, £25), is the autobiography of Edward Tudor-Pole, whose many claims to fame include being a one-time member of the Sex Pistols, enjoying a Top Ten hit with his band Tenpole Tudor, fronting the Channel 4 show The Crystal Maze, playing Spike Milligan in the film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers as well as cameo appearances in the Harry Potter films and Game of Thrones. As you will have have gathered Edward is a colourful character and he writes engagingly about his many adventures, be it the Bohemian London of the Seventies and Eighties or the theatrical and cinema worlds he inhabited before returning to his first love, rock and roll…

Earth to Earth, by John Cornwell (riverrun, £22), is a fully updated and revised edition of a true crime classic first published 40 years ago, concerning the mysterious deaths of three unmarried siblings on a remote North Devon farm in the mid-Seventies. The original book left several questions unanswered, which Cornwell seeks to answer in this new edition, with some success, and there is a fascinating coda involving future Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, which adds an extra level of weirdness to an already strange and beguiling story…

With Test cricket under threat from shorter formats of the game, Tim Wigmore has marked the approach of its 150th anniversary with an absorbing new history, reminding us what is so special about this most demanding, but also enriching, of sporting endeavours. Test Cricket: A History (Quercus, £30) takes us from the early years of Test cricket through the controversies that at times have threatened to derail it to modern times, when the format has undergone a revival thanks to the exploits of Ben Stokes and his Bazballers. Featuring interviews with such luminaries as Sachin Tendulkar, Ian Chappell, Kevin Pieterson and Michael Holding, it’s rich in anecdotes and the perfect accompaniment to the English cricketing summer…

Crucified (Zaffre, £22) is the fifth book in Lynda La Plante’s gripping Jack Warr series, and finds the troubled detective involved in a particularly gruesome case, but is it as policeman or witness? And in The Other People, by CB Everett (Simon and Schuster, £18.99) ten strangers, who wake up inside an old locked house, have to solve the disappearance of a young woman in order to escape. But with a killer picking them off one by one the stakes could not be higher…

Quentin Letts’ new novel Nunc! (Constable, £18.99) is a modern take on the story behind the Nunc Dimittis, the canticle performed in cathedrals and Anglican churches throughout the year. Otherwise known as the Song of Simeon it is based on ten verses of Luke’s Gospel which tell of an old man who is told he will not die until he sees the Messiah. When he sees the infant Jesus Simeon cries, ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word’. Letts’ novel brings a modern twist to the Biblical story, as well as a novel take on the Nativity, bookending it with a moving reflection on how the ‘Nunc’, as it has become known to countless generations of choristers, may bring solace to someone today contemplating their own demise…

Building a small shed amidst the trees, close to his Sussex home, Adam Nicolson set about immersing himself in the day-to-day lives of the birds that made their home there. The result is the brilliant Bird School (William Collins, £22), which draws on literature, philosophy and science to conjure up the remarkable, fragile, beguiling wonder of the natural world…

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