Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor

Jon McGregor is an audacious writer. In an age where narrative in the most popular works of art often proceeds at a breakneck speed, he has chosen to defy this. Reservoir 13 (2017) is his first novel for thirteen years and like his debut novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002), it was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Reservoir 13 also won the Costa Novel Award for 2017. It managed this feat in spite of his use of the passive voice and the utter absence of dialogue in the novel.

Reservoir 13 begins with an apparent hook: a thirteen-year-old girl has gone missing in an unnamed Derbyshire village. 

Towering Ambition

If you’ve ever wanted to spend the night in a Martello Tower erected to stop Napoleon landing on the Suffolk coast, or in a pink seaside villa that once belonged to author John Fowles, now is your chance.

Booking for the Landmark Trust’s five most popular properties – which include a miniature classical pavilion in Shropshire, a 13th-century castle in Warwickshire and a four-storey folly in Dorset – for the second half of 2019 opens to the public tomorrow. These renovated gems are some of the most startlingly quirky properties you could hope to rent.

Making Bread Ahead Doughnuts

Like most people, I will eat any doughnut offered to me: a Greggs jam doughnut; a Krispy Kreme chocolate dreamcake or even a yuzu and matcha vegan number from Crosstown. The absolute acme of doughnut perfection, however, are Bread Ahead doughnuts. 

Originally made by baker Justin Gellatly for St. John restaurant, he’s now Head Baker at Bread Ahead where they sell 5000 of these beauties a week. Even if you’ve never tried one, you’ve probably seen pictures of them on Instagram.

Meeting Elizabeth Jane Howard

I had read Slipstream (2002), the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard’s brilliant – and apparently candid – memoir by the time I interviewed her in November 2013. It was less than two months before she died. I wondered what else there was to ask her: she had laid bare her disastrous first marriage to Peter Scott, son of the Antarctic explorer; her affair with Cecil Day-Lewis, whilst he was married to one of her closest friends; her acrimonious divorce from her third husband, fellow writer Kingsley Amis, and so much more.

Five Books You Should Have Read (Instead of Lie About Having Read)

The best response to someone asking you about a book you haven’t read is to own up – immediately. The main reason for not lying about what you’ve read, of course, is that the lie somehow seems to stop you from actually getting round to the book. It’s also rather chic to be honest about this. I asked the bestselling novelist David Nicholls what he thought of DH Lawrence a few years ago and he said: ‘I would be more eloquent about this if I’d ever got to the end of one of his novels – and I never have.’ 

Justine Tabak

If, like us, you’ve been enjoying the new BBC adaptation of Howards End, then you’ve probably also been seduced by the clothes of the bohemian Schlegel sisters. We’ve found that it doesn’t do to interpret the style of an Edwardian bluestocking too literally and don’t feel we could pull off the high-necked, puff-sleeved blouses as amply as Hayley Atwell does anyway. We do, however, yearn for a long oxblood red skirt or a dress in smart cotton tartan with a black velvet ribbon tie. This is where Justine Tabak, who has produced a small collection of just such clothes, comes in.