22 JULY 1995, page 28

The Scarlet Alphabet

Brian Unsworth PEARL by Christopher Bigsby Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £15.99, pp. 234 I n Pearl Christopher Bigsby has given us a sequel to his novel Hester, which is itself a......

Beliefs

Half the apparent truth of the world is mad (whether the optimists' good' or the pessimists' bad') and most of us failed the exams in it, after all, bored stiff by the so-called......

Books

Ah, Josephine, petite perle fine! Alastair Forbes NAPOLEON AND JOSEPHINE: AN IMPROBABLE MARRIAGE by Evangeline Bruce Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25, pp. 555 I t must have been an......