The Photography Of Victorian Scotland by Roddy Simpson (Edinburgh University Press, £24.99)
A more technical introduction to the history of photography in Scotland than a deconstruction of images taken during the 19th century, this study nevertheless shows the influence of painters like Raeburn on early photographers, where people are staged like those on canvas. Scottish photographers caught Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson in iconic images, too.
The Secret Life Of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan (Headline Review, £7.99)
Morgan is a skilled historical novelist, having already proved his prowess with the Shelley circle and the Brontes. This life of William Shakespeare follows a similar linear narrative and gives more attention to the Bard's marriage with the older Ann Hathaway. Never subversive or challenging, he does know how to spin out a good tale.
This Generation: Dispatches From China's Most Popular Blogger by Han Han (Simon and Schuster, £8.99)
It's inevitable perhaps that what would pass for more socially and politically conservative comments in the West ("a nation that views wealth with hostility ... is bound to be backward and deprived") are seen as subversive in communist China. Blogger Han Han's posts date from 2006 and critiques of his homeland take in China's one-child policy and rising prices.
Seducing Ingrid Bergman by Chris Greenhalgh (Penguin, £7.99)
This novel traces the "secret affair" between photographer Robert Capa and a married Ingrid Bergman at the end of the war in Paris (cue a real-life Casablanca-styled doomed romance). Perhaps because of the real-life fame of the participants, it never quite rings true and Bergman's third-person narrative, unlike Capa's first-person one, is especially distancing.
Lesley McDowell
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