Catherine Hewitt's 3 favorite reads in 2025

• 2023
• 2024
• 2025

Maggie O'Farrell’s fictional resurrection of Shakespeare’s dead son has now become a major film. The narrative traces the final days and aftermath of 11-year-old Hamnet’s death at the time of the great plague. This of course strikes a chillingly familiar chord in our post-Covid era. But the central focus here is not so much the pestilence, the unnamed Shakespeare or even the boy who – almost – gave his name to one of literature’s greatest plays; rather it is Agnes (or Anne) Hathaway, the playwright’s wife. O’Farrell gives this elusive and often maligned historical figure a voice and an enthralling depth of character. Agnes is a seer and a medicinal herbalist, who is distraught when the one person her skills fail is her only son. This mother’s grief and desperation to see her son’s ghost is truly heartrending. The story twists and turns effortlessly, flipping backwards and forwards in time so artfully that nothing of the pace is lost. Every word earns its place, the text is punchy yet fluid, the perfect balance of expansion and concision. The use of the present tense adds to the filmic feel. And O’Farrell’s research is top-notch. She even planted her own herb garden and learnt how to fly a kestrel to give authenticity to her novel. The writing is assured, the plot compelling and the reader feels as if they are living the period with the characters. This really is historical fiction at its best.

As the title suggests, this group biography is not so much a patchwork as an expertly conducted harmony. Broad transports us to the turn of the 20th century, and into the lives of four musical impresarios: Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen. All four entered the music world at a time when women were not openly welcomed as professionals. Broad’s description of their diverse characters, trials and triumphs is at once richly told and deeply satisfying. We get to know Ethel, the strong-willed, trailblazing bisexual composer of operas, who went everywhere with her half-St Bernard dog and eventually had to face deafness. There is Rebecca, the elegant viola player who became one of the first women ever employed in a professional orchestra; the modest and reserved Dorothy made a name for herself at the Proms after the First World War. And the more mysterious pianist and composer Doreen wrote music for Elizabeth II’s coronation film, all the while conducting an illicit affair with her married composition tutor from the Royal Academy. The women’s stories unfold – and at times overlap – to give a woman’s perspective on the music world at the turn of the century. Broad’s research is thorough, but her use of it discerning; there are no superfluous tangents here. These women are real and believable, their stories engaging. With Quartet, Broad has made an important and thoroughly readable contribution to women’s history.

The premise of this book is inspired. King spotlights the Paris art world during the decade preceding the ground-breaking 1st Impressionist exhibition in 1874. For his subjects, he takes an unlikely duo – Ernest Meissonnier (the academic painter who specialised in closely worked historical and military scenes) and Edouard Manet (the master of modern life and enfant terrible who inspired the Impressionists). The author moves backwards and forwards between the men’s different creative projects, plotting their relationship to the Paris Salon, that all-important, state-sponsored exhibition that could make or break an artist at the time. In so doing, King gives us two radically different angles on the 19th-century art world, with all its peaks and troughs, rules and penalties, backstabbing and intrigue. The research and level of detail here are astounding, but the text isn’t too heavy. On the contrary, flitting between the two different artists gives the narrative impetus, driving it forwards. An illuminating read and an original approach, The Judgement of Paris is a masterful example of a scholar bringing history to life for the general reader.