Birdcage Walk

Helen Dunmore Hutchinson €26.59

Lizzie Fawkes, the resourceful heroine of this fine historical novel, has grown up in radical circles in late 18th-century Bristol. She follows every twist and turn of the French Revolution the way a modern feminist might follow the latest Trump news on Twitter. But storm clouds are gathering closer to home. Diner, her property developer husband, has staked everything on a local housing boom. He also seems to be exhibiting a predilection for violence… The resulting page-turner is classic Dunmore: a subtle exhumation of the past in which long-buried passions seem thrillingly immediate. Max Davidson