Bob Dylan: No Direction Home ★★★★ Robert Shelton PALAZZO. £30 For Dylan’s 80th birthday, a coffee-table-style return of the 1986 biography.

If Robert Shelton never wrote another word after his New York Times rave of Bob Dylan’s set opening for The Greenbriar Boys in September 1961 – the review heard ’round the world – he would have a sacred place in the singer’s tale. But the critic, who died in 1995, stayed close to Dylan, turning that proximity and trust into a landmark account of Dylan’s genesis and ascension. Shelton brought investigative ardour to his access – he was the first writer to speak to Dylan’s parents, blowing up the myths their son peddled to obscure his origins – while his lengthy interviews with the star caught him unfiltered and on fire, at historic crossroads. This generously illustrated update, based on Shelton’s original preferred edit, published in 2011, has judicious cuts (such as Shelton’s song-by-song LP breakdowns). The most puzzling trim: that ’61 review, previously quoted in full but severely abridged here. If any book should have it intact, every time, it’s this one. David Fricke