Terry Kirby’s The Newsmongers studies everyone from Daniel Defoe to Rupert Murdoch. Photograph: Sean Gladwell/Getty Images
Terry Kirby Reaktion, £20, pp39 2
The average Observer reader might be unfamiliar with contemporary tabloid newspapers, but in this informative – if overlong – survey of that subsection of journalism, Terry Kirby studies everyone from Daniel Defoe to Rupert Murdoch, ruthlessly dissecting their venality and opportunism. He also, in the interests of balance, salutes them when they dared to do something their competition would have balked at, notably the Daily Mail ’s famously ballsy “Murderers” front page headline on the killing of Stephen Lawrence . Few will end this book thinking better of tabloids, but it’s sometimes hard not to admire their – and their proprietors’ – chutzpah.
From Thomas Mann to Daphne du Maurier, Venice has always been fertile territory for authors. AJ Martin – the alter ego of the excellent Andrew Martin – here serves up an immensely readable addition to the panoply. The story of an overimaginative 14-year old orphan, Monica, who heads to Italy with her overbearing guardian, Rose Driscoll, only to fear that she has accidentally killed her and blotted out all memory of doing so, is rich in atmospheric dread, with a fine sense of both Edwardian repression and the mournful mysteries of Venice.
Suzie Edge’s highly enjoyable and original history book focuses on an overlooked aspect of biography: the various body parts of the great, good and nefarious. Over the course of Vital Organs ’s often riotous pages, Edge examines everything from Adolf Hitler’s missing testicle (said, of course, to reside in the Albert Hall) to Fanny Burney’s severed breast, with her primitive, anaesthetic-free mastectomy described in detail to her sister in a vivid and still horrifying letter . Equal parts well-researched history and accessible science treatise, this is fascinating stuff, with Edge a marvellously informed guide.
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