For the first time in history, more than half the population - 3.3 billion people - is now living in cities. Elberry reviews 'the ultimate guidebook to our urban centres'... From the sky, England still looks green. On the ground, it's another story, all cancerous conurbations and serial ghettos. Most people ... Read More...

Thanks to our friends at Naxos Audiobooks, The Dabbler is serialising Richard Fawkes' award-winning The History of Classical Music, read by Robert Powell... In this second episode, Fawkes looks at the Gothic Age, the Motet and the Troubadour tradition.... This serialisation is an abridged version of the full audiobook, which you can ... Read More...

Thanks to our friends at Naxos Audiobooks, The Dabbler is serialising Richard Fawkes' award-winning The History of Classical Music, read by Robert Powell... In this first episode, Fawkes goes right back the origins of western classical music with the sound of Gregorian chant, and moves through to the music of Hildegard ... Read More...

  We imagine that this might be one of our more popular book club choices, as this month we’re giving away 12 copies of Robert Macfarlane's fantastic new book to members of our Dabbler Book Club and our esteemed, yet highly secretive League of Dabblers…if you haven't yet joined up, now ... Read More...

London foodie journalist goes native in Italian village? Elberry finds his expectations exceeded by Tracey Lawson's account of the exceptionally healthy lifestyle of the people of Campodimele... I feared this might be an "I adore peasant food!"-style book by a London fool with a Tuscan villa. Certainly, the signs were not ... Read More...

The lucky winners of the latest Dabbler Book Club selection... Free books. What's not to like? We had a dozen copies of Mark Haddon's latest novel The Red House to give away to Dabbler Book Club members (find out more here). Here's how The Guardian introduced it: The Red House is a closely observed domestic drama that ... Read More...

It's lovely giveaway time again, and that means we've got a teetering pile of 12 copies of a rather popular new book to give away to members of our Dabbler Book Club and our esteemed, yet highly secretive League of Dabblers... Unless you've been living in a cave it's unlikely that ... Read More...

To mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth, we've been serialising The Pickwick Papers. This is the final part of the serialisation. From next week we'll have another treat for our readers... Thanks to our friends at Naxos Audiobooks, we've been exclusively serialising their abridged version of what is perhaps ... Read More...

Thanks to our friends at Picaor, we've got 5 copies of a great new F Scott Fitzgerald collection to give away... “First you take a drink,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted, “then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” Fitzgerald wrote alcohol into almost every one of his ... Read More...

To mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth, we're serialising The Pickwick Papers... Thanks to our friends at Naxos Audiobooks, we're exclusively serialising their abridged version of what is perhaps Dickens’ funniest work, The Pickwick Papers, read by Anton Lesser. The latest episodes can be heard below. You can catch up ... Read More...