In brief: Uncommon Ground; The Pretender; All That Glitters
Patrick GalbraithWilliam Collins, £22, pp356
Nature writer Patrick Galbraith's excellent second book more than fulfils the promise that his equally fine debut In Search of One Last Song suggested. In a series of acutely observed and often very funny vignettes ('it was diverse in the sense that there were people there from almost every Oxbridge college'), Galbraith travels across rural Britain in an attempt to look beyond the usual cliches of country life. In his exploration of everything from economic turmoil to the concept of 'belonging', he proves an erudite guide.
Jo HarkinBloomsbury, £18.99, pp452
'Wolf Hall meets Demon Copperhead' is an impressive billing for a first-time novelist, but The Pretender mostly justifies it. Jo Harkin veers closer to the grittiness of Dan Jones's medieval-set fiction than the visionary sweep of Hilary Mantel, but it is still an auspicious venture into fictionalised history. Loosely based on the real-life royal pretender Lambert Simnel,The Pretender explores the machinations of the wars of the roses with authority, bringing the frightening world she depicts to life.
Orlando WhitfieldProfile, £10.99, pp336 (paperback)
If Orlando Whitfield's readable and fascinating memoir-cum-exposé of the art world isn't turned into a big-budget film, it will be an opportunity missed. The author explores his friendship with the charismatic art dealer-cum-convicted fraudster Inigo Philbrick, detailing how he becomes increasingly successful and ever more grandiose in his ideas. All That Glitters would be a considerable accomplishment for a veteran writer, but the knowledge that it is Whitfield's debut makes it all the more impressive.
To order Uncommon Ground, The Pretender or All That Glitters go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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The Guardian
01-05-2025
- The Guardian
The Pretender by Jo Harkin review – a bold and brilliant comedy of royal intrigue
One day in 1484, strange men arrive at the Oxfordshire farm where 10-year-old John Collan lives. They've come to carry him away to a new life, for he is not, after all, the farmer's son; in fact, he's Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, spirited away in infancy to keep him safe ahead of the day he might return to claim the throne of England. That day is now in sight. He can't call himself John any more, but he can't yet be announced as Edward, Earl of Warwick. In the meantime he'll be given a third name: Lambert Simnel. Over the course of this fantastically accomplished novel, the many-named boy will travel from Oxford to Burgundy then Ireland, and at last into the paranoid and double-crossing heart of Henry VII's court. The tail end of the Wars of the Roses – with Richard III's crown snatched from the mud of Bosworth by Henry Tudor – is a foment of plot and counter-plot, and our hero spends his adolescence being passed around scheming factions who go so far as to hold a coronation for him. What a painful life this is for a boy 'so grateful for any amount of love' as he falls in and out of favour, uncertain of his own parentage, gaining and losing relatives as their interest turns to other plots and other pretenders. He's heard stories of changelings, but at least those strange children come with the clarity of a straight swap: Simnel is all his past selves, and none of them. He thinks of John, the sweetly priggish little boy from the farm, who loves mystery plays and football and fairy stories, 'bricked up like an anchorite' inside his new self. One character describes him as a changeling in reverse, 'for changelings are dark and wicked things and Edward a fair prince' – but once he's demoted back to Simnel and becomes embroiled in the machinations of the Tudor court, those 'dark and wicked' elements are revealed as inextricable from the 'fair prince'. At least he has the consolation of an education. Hothoused in the ways of nobility, our hero '[eats] up every learning he's been given like a chicken after grasshoppers'. His intellectual world is communicated impeccably and with purpose. Simnel rejoices in books, begs for them, is 'astonied', outraged and aroused by their contents. The Pretender is scattered with fine knobbly period language ('dole', 'maigre', 'puissant', 'wroth') and witty dialogue, and this stylish delivery brings with it considerable substance. Simnel's reading of Chaucer, Dante, Malory, John Gower and John Lydgate alongside classical works of Boethius, Juvenal, Horace, Ovid and Apuleius isn't included simply to pay lip service to historical research. There's a deep love for literature here, and a desire to showcase the formation of the late-medieval mind, which elevates The Pretender above other novels about this period. Simnel, wrestling with all manner of rhetorical devices, discovers bocardo syllogism: 'All kings are of noble birth. You become a king. You are of noble birth.' In interludes, he attempts to write about himself. He tries fairytales and romances, but when attempting satire he comes to the realisation that if 'satire is written by the noble, in service of the social order', then as upstart pretender to the throne, 'he's exactly the thing they're complaining about'. Delving into history books, 'the fragility of the past horrifies him'. It turns out facts are far more mutable than he'd imagined: 'some dead historians have lied, or guessed, and now nobody knows what's true'. When it comes to reading autobiography, he finds authors 'making an argument for their selves', but by this time he has no self of his own to argue for. In fact, he's already signed a prepared confession renouncing his alleged identity. Is he now complicit in his own disappearance? There are few historical eras as passionately disputed as the Wars of the Roses. Much ink and emotion has been spilt in debate of its perceived heroes and villains. Harkin's version of Simnel and his world, therefore, will not necessarily please every reader – but this is a feature rather than a bug. The Pretender is a novel about uncertainty. 'Only kings write history', perhaps, but when those kings are so busy deposing one another, 'history is written in wax'. This doesn't happen in the rustling domain of documents preserved or burned, copied out or left to rot: John/Edward/Simnel shows us what happens when it's your own life being revised and rewritten even as you live it. A traditional Bildungsroman concerns an individual's process of becoming. What is the name for a tale of unravelling? 'In a few hundred years,' our hero says, 'Richard [III] will be a hunchback and I'll be a scoundrel.' This bold, brilliant and deeply compassionate treatment restores a life to Simnel. Was it the life he lived? None of us will ever know. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion The Pretender by Jo Harkin is published by Bloomsbury (£18.99). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
Daily Mail
30-04-2025
- Daily Mail
JOHN MACLEOD: Skewering of the urban radicals by a countryman who knows and loves rural Britain
The signs were everywhere – KEEP DOGS ON LEAD – but the estate-manager bumped into a local pair he knew well. Lovely couple. Their spaniel dog was unleashed, bouncing around. It had earlier, trilled the lady, killed a hare. He swallowed hard. 'Probably had leverets…' They stared. 'Leverets: Is that so? We didn't know hares got a disease.' Into the midst of such blithering ignorance and the Right To Roam movement, Patrick Galbraith pounces generally like a leopard on a goat. Uncommon Ground is as good a book as you will read this year. An informed, sharp and often very funny look at rural realities and the current clamour for 'access' – and not by some lounge-lizard from Islington. Galbraith is exuberant, involved, hands-on. In the unfolding chapters, he bounces around Britain like an enthusing Tintin. There are some beguiling, bucolic lines – 'After going to see the cheesemaker, I drove to Little Snoring to see an egg farmer called David Perowne.' Or, visiting Appleby in high summer, noting 'the river beneath us, which is down on its bones in the sun…' But our Patrick also heads out with poachers, crashes an illegal rave, drops in on gipsies, sups with lairds and gamekeepers, shoots the breeze at a foxhunt (Reynard's final fate is tactfully unrecorded) and joins a chap foraging for magic mushrooms. The author, too, engages patiently with activists demanding total abolition of the right to own land. And he even, for a few pages, wanders naked with naturists, though that chapter is much less exciting than you might think. Patrick Galbraith knows his stuff. He is still only thirty-two and hails from Dunscore, Dumfries. Attended some frightfully good school, has a a weakness for squashy huntin'-shootin'-fishin' hats. And he's about to marry; his young lady is a serious wildfowler. Galbraith himself is a qualified deerstalker, writes like an angel and, for seven years, was the editor of Shooting Times. The sort of educated Scot who, one metropolitan evening, might sip English sparkling wine at some black-tie private viewing – and, not a day later, be lying on his tweedy tummy on the Clisham bog with an unwitting 10-pointer stag in his crosshairs. Galbraith loves rural Britain. Better still, he knows it – the sort of enthralling companion who can identify distant mallards at a glance, distinguish in an instant a salmon from a seatrout, effortlessly gralloch a deer and identify any tree, even in bare and twiggy winter. And there are two points he keeps hammering in Uncommon Ground. For one, he questions the general obsession on the Marxist-Lentilist Left with who owns a given chunk of Britain. In many – perhaps most – instances, the question is academic. What really matters is who lives on the land, how they work it, and how to greater or lesser degree the public can engage with it. Devolved Scotland's ongoing obsession with 'community ownership' is something Galbraith delicately questions. And with reason. In North Harris, for instance – bought by its residents from a cider-mogul two decades ago – it has proved very difficult to generate income and balance the books. Uncommon Ground's second great strength is another repeated point: that, often, the best thing you can do for endangered wildlife and a given, fragile environment is not to go anywhere near it. In this respect, the beasts are wiser than us. Seals do not show up in your living-room to hog the sofa and use your carpet as a latrine. Yet – wind-surfing, kayaking, snorkelling, bouncing onto remote tidal shores or stomping into their caves – we repeatedly invade their territory. And then suddenly, some summer, wonder why we don't see local seals any more. The gorge, too, has risen in my own throat when I spot raucous tourists making merry by a ghetto-blaster amidst a tern colony, heedless of the frantic birds – circling overhead – desperate to feed their young. This matters in a Britain where the lapwing population has crashed by 90 per cent, untold counties have seen their last curlew, most will never hear a nightingale and the Scottish wildcat may be within twenty years of extinction. Mountain-bikers do not actually have a God-given right to batter repeatedly through the fragile ground of grey-legged partridges and even the dedicated birdwatcher, however clever his camouflage or long his lens, can scare black grouse away from their 'lek' forever. Galbraith, too, repeatedly skewers the preachy pretensions of Right To Roam and its ocean-going ignorance of responsible land management. In one lovely scene, he purrs of a Right To Roam love-in in London, 'Mark is a sort of floating radical on the radical Left, and it was diverse in the sense that there were people there from almost every Oxbridge college...' Elsewhere, Galbraith drawls, 'There is something cultish about wild swimming, like people who have sourdough starters or go to the Tate Modern.' But, when he needs to be, he is rightly angry. In one immersive chapter we spend time on the Arundel estate, where Charlie the gamekeeper – at the decree of the gentle Duke – studies and delights in the songbirds, hatches curlew eggs under a heat-lamp, and responsibly traps voracious predators like crows and magpies. He layers hedges; fences off the plots where lapwings breed, keeps partridge feeders topped up… and his reward? Guy Shrubsole of Right To Roam boasts, online, how he has deliberately freed crows from a Larsen trap under Charlie's remit. Weeks later, Right To Roam summon protestors for a mass-trespass on the Arundel estate – 'to bear witness to the 'ecological destruction' that goes on behind those fences.' In a world increasingly terrified of difficult debates and fraught controversies – the BBC's Have I Got News For You, two weeks ago, completely ignored the biggest story of the week, the Supreme Court's ruling as to what, in law, is a woman – Patrick Galbraith jumps confidently into every complexity he meets. In one of the book's funniest exchanges, an Isle of Lewis poacher confides, 'Never eaten salmon in my life…' Though perhaps, he muses, he should probably try it before the fish-stocks go instinct. Uncommon Ground has its occasional lacunae and would have benefited from proper proof-reading with an eye to detail. But it's an enthralling journey, a vision – and, in its own way, a manifesto. Essentially, our problem is ignorance, Galbraith concludes. In what is now an overwhelmingly urban country, we know little of rural reality, and care less. In a land where an advertised vacancy for an editorial assistant – the lowest rung in publishing – can see a thousand applicants, how many of those young people 'would have welcomed the opportunity to learn crosscutting and tree-felling? How many would have welcomed the opportunity to learn how to use a billhook? To Patrick Galbraith's delight, a campaign by a tireless Bristol woman, Mary Colwell to get a Natural History GCESE on the school curriculum was, last year, on the brink of success. Then, in December, it was paused by the new Government. Labour, sources whispered, had decided it was a 'Tory initiative.' Uncommon Ground: Rethinking Our Relationship with the Countryside. By Patrick Galbraith. William Collins. £22.
Scottish Sun
30-04-2025
- Scottish Sun
‘Gorgeous' jewellery brand loved by celebs including GBBO's Prue Leith announces sudden closure as it launches huge sale
Shoppers have just days to visit the colourful store ALL THAT GLITTERS 'Gorgeous' jewellery brand loved by celebs including GBBO's Prue Leith announces sudden closure as it launches huge sale Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A "GORGEOUS" jewellery brand loved by celebs including Prue Leith has announced its sudden closure as it launches a huge sale. The independent store and home of hand-crafted colourful costume jewellery, offered sterling silver items, freshwater pearls, and a range of accessories. 4 The Jewellery Stop on Poplar Road has been in business for 15 years 4 The store sold a variety of colourful pieces 4 TV Presenter Clare Balding even has her own online 'style' section Having been a colourful feature of Kings Heath in Birmingham for over 15 years, The Jewellery Stop has come to the "heartfelt" decision to close down. Its goods have been worn and loved by many a celeb including The Great British Bake Off's Dame Prue Leith and TV broadcaster Clare Balding. The broadcaster even has her own online section known as "Clare Balding style". She has been spotted wearing the store's colourful jewellery designs on TV many times including during the Olympics, the Paralympics, Wimbledon and most recently Crufts 2025. But sadly, a Facebook post revealed the shop's decision to close. The post read: "Dear loyal customers of Kings Heath and beyond, here at The Jewellery Stop on Poplar Road we have made the difficult and heartfelt decision to close our shop on Friday, May 2. "We have 30 per cent off selected items including KEW gardens soaps and hand creams, greeting cards and selected jewellery. Do come and see us in store during our last few days! However, the spokesperson added "we are not going far" and revealed the business will move online. They said: "Our click and collect service will still be available to our loyal customers and we will continue to dress our shop windows with colourful and inspiring products form our online range. "We are making this change in order to create a dynamic and inspiring office space to continue to grow our online business and evolve with changing shopping trends. STEAK OUT Beloved steakhouse chain to shut ALL its restaurants after collapsing into administration with no explanation "We appreciate this adjustment to online only may not suit everybody and we hope to be able to offer an alternative shopping experience further down the line. "Please follow our Facebook page for updates or check posters in our shop windows. "We are so grateful to everyone who has shopped with us over the years, thank you for being part of our journey." With quality jewellery came quality reviews and this shop has earned its fair share. One person shared to Google Reviews: "Absolutely beautiful pieces, I have bought 2 of the star necklaces from this lovely shop in the past and I always get compliments when I wear them! "Would love if there were more of this design available in different colours because I absolutely love them! "Planning to visit the shop when I can because it would be lovely to see these gorgeous pieces in person and meet the lovely people behind the shop!" Why are retailers closing stores? RETAILERS have been feeling the squeeze since the pandemic, while shoppers are cutting back on spending due to the soaring cost of living crisis. High energy costs and a move to shopping online after the pandemic are also taking a toll, and many high street shops have struggled to keep going. However, additional costs have added further pain to an already struggling sector. The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs from April will cost the retail sector £2.3billion. At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40. The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year. It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year. Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: "The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025." It comes after almost 170,000 retail workers lost their jobs in 2024. End-of-year figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research showed the number of job losses spiked amid the collapse of major chains such as Homebase and Ted Baker. It said its latest analysis showed that a total of 169,395 retail jobs were lost in the 2024 calendar year to date. This was up 49,990 – an increase of 41.9% – compared with 2023. It is the highest annual reading since more than 200,000 jobs were lost in 2020 in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced retailers to shut their stores during lockdowns. The centre said 38 major retailers went into administration in 2024, including household names such as Lloyds Pharmacy, Homebase, The Body Shop, Carpetright and Ted Baker. Around a third of all retail job losses in 2024, 33% or 55,914 in total, resulted from administrations. Experts have said small high street shops could face a particularly challenging 2025 because of Budget tax and wage changes. Professor Bamfield has warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector. "By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer's household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020." Followed by a second person: "Absolutely gorgeous jewellery. Every time my friend and I go to a flower show we look out for the stand selling this beautiful jewellery. "My friend bought a necklace in May and has worn it continously. It hasn't tarnished with wearing and being sprayed with perfume. It looks as good as the day she bought it. "I have bought earrings and necklaces over the years we have seen the jewellery stand. "They make beautiful gifts too. We probably won't see you at Chatsworth. "But we'll definitely see you next year and buy your beautiful jewellery and bring you a coffee." Just two days ago one person left a review via the store's website. They said: "Bought a pair of earrings in a local independent shop a while ago. "I liked them so much, that I went back to see if they had them in different colours. "They didn't, but gave me the makers, The Jewellery Stop! So now I have three pairs of beautiful coloured leaf earrings."
