MUST READS
UNNATURAL CAUSES by Dr Richard Shepherd (Penguin £8.99, 400pp)
UNNATURAL CAUSES
by Dr Richard Shepherd (Penguin £8.99, 464pp)
‘From an early age I have had a relationship with death that is both intimate and distant,’ writes forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd, whose mother died when he was nine years old. As a teenager, he discovered a copy of Simpson’s Forensic Medicine, and ‘my future became clear to me’.
His career as one of our most eminent forensic pathologists meant that he was involved in high- profile cases — Stephen Lawrence’s murder, Harold Shipman, the Hungerford massacre and 9/11.
He is frank about the personal cost of conducting some 20,000 postmortems: his first marriage ended, and he suffered from PTSD.
But, happily remarried and with his health restored, he returned to the work he loved, deciphering the last moments of victims with respect and fairness.
Share this article
THE KING AND THE CATHOLICS by Antonia Fraser (Weidenfeld £10.99, 336pp)
THE KING AND THE CATHOLICS
by Antonia Fraser (Weidenfeld £10.99, 336pp)
In the summer of 1780, London was the scene of the most protracted urban riots in British history.
‘My knees went knicky knocky,’ wrote Susanna, sister of the novelist Fanny Burney, as her neighbour’s house was burned.
The riots, instigated by Lord George Gordon, an anti-Catholic MP, were a protest against the Catholic Relief Act, passed in 1778, which allowed Catholics to buy and inherit land, but still forbade them to sit in Parliament unless they renounced their faith.
Both King George III and, later, his son, George IV, were vehemently opposed to full Catholic emancipation, and it was not until 1829 that it became law.
Antonia Fraser, a Catholic convert, brings a novelist’s eye for detail to her humane and timely account of the conflict between Protestants and Catholics.
SO MUCH LIFE LEFT OVER
SO MUCH LIFE LEFT OVER by Louis de Bernieres (Vintage £8.99, 528pp)
by Louis de Bernieres (Vintage £8.99, 288pp)
The 2015 novel by Louis de Bernieres, The Dust That Falls From Dreams, told of the entwined fates of three families, the Pitts, McCoshes and Pendennises in the early 20th century.
In that novel, the teenaged Daniel Pitt is in love with Rosie McCosh, who in turn loves Ashbridge Pendennis. While Daniel, an ace fighter pilot, survives the war, Ashbridge does not.
As de Bernieres’ latest novel begins, Daniel and Rosie, now married with a small daughter, are building a post-war life in what was then called Ceylon.
Amazed to be alive, and happy in his marriage and work as a tea planter, Daniel has fared better than his brother, Archie, who is traumatised by the war and his hopeless love for Rosie.
But when Rosie’s second child is stillborn, their hard-won contentment begins to unravel. The second in a planned trilogy, this is an engaging family saga.
