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	London: The Biography - by Peter Ackroyd When the eminent novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd finished writing London: The Biography, he almost immediately had a heart attack, such was the effort of his 800-page work about the "human body" that is this most fascinating of cities. And not just any human body either, but "envisaged in the form of a young man with his arms outstretched in a gesture of liberation ... it embodies the energy and exaltation of a city continually beating in great waves of progress and of confidence". Probably there is no one better placed than Ackroyd--the author of mammoth lives of Dickens and Blake, and novels such as Hawksmoor and Dan Leno and the Lime House Golem which set singular characters against the backdrop of a city constantly shifting in time--to write such a rich, sinewy account of "Infinite London". Ackroyd's London is no mere chronology. Its chapters take on such varied themes as drinking, sex, childhood, poverty, crime and punishment, sewage, food, pestilence and fire, immigration, maps, theatre, war. We learn that gin was "the demon of London for half a century", and that "it has been estimated that in the 1740s and 1750s there were 17,000 'gin-houses'". Fleet Street was an area known for its "violent delights" where "a fourteen-year-old boy, only eighteen inches high, was to be seen in 1702 at a grocer's shop called the Eagle and Child by Shoe Lane". By the mid 19th-century "London had become known as the greatest city on earth". By 1939 "one in five of the British population had become a Londoner". Though the variousness of London's chapters mean that it can be dipped into at random, Ackroyd is employing a skilful and continuous theme throughout, which constantly links past and present--the similarities of children's games in Lambeth in 1910 and 1999; the obsession with time--"in twenty-first century London time rushes forward and is everywhere apparent", while in 18th-century London the church clock of Newgate "regulated the times of hanging". Above all, he insists that the "dark secret life" of the metropolis is as relevant today as it was in perhaps its most appropriate period, Victorian London. Again and again Ackroyd returns to the image of London as a living organism, hence his use of the word "biography" in the title. At once awed by and intimate with this "ubiquitous" city, he stresses that "it can be located nowhere in particular ... its circumference is everywhere". --Catherine Taylor
	Gary Rhodes Cookery Year: Spring into Summer Cookery Year Spring Into Summer (the first of two volumes) is built upon the notion, which may be new to some readers, that foods tend to be seasonal and, by and large, are at their best in that season. Rhubarb, flounder, lamb and asparagus in spring; beetroot, broad beans and soft fruit in summer. Rhodes is first and foremost a restaurant chef, which, as he says, means that he is accustomed to an unlimited supply of fresh food from around the world all through the year: returning to the real world seems to have been a bit of a revelation. It must also be his professional background that inclines him to present his recipes as complete servings--main dish and accompaniments. Grilled beef comes with baby turnips, marinated mushrooms and a beetroot dressing. Soaked lemon semolina wedge (a cake) with warm blueberries. Baked cheese puffs with fresh beetroot sauce. This is generous, but at the same time oddly limiting: it's hard to imagine many cooks taking these recipes into their repertoires and playing freely with them. One hesitantly comes to the conclusion that Gary Rhodes inhabits a dimension not altogether congruent with the one occupied by the rest of us. There is, on the one hand, the fluent strangeness of his prose, in which verbs slip effortlessly from transitive to intransitive (main dish A "eats well" with garnish B, we keep being told). And the recipes themselves, on the other, invariably well-constructed and thought-provoking as they are, seem often to have arrived fully-formed from some mysterious other universe free of gastronomic tradition and history. What general principles can a cook extract from Roast Gurnard with Beetroot, White Bean and Orange Salad or Braised Beef Brisket with Tarragon Carrots and Cauliflower Champ? Readers will be able to judge for themselves how liberating these combinations are. At any rate, it's a relief to find Rhodes largely eschewing his baffling enthusiasm for school dinners (no Gypsy Tart recipes here). -- Robin Davidson
	All Right, Mate? - by Jim Pollard "I first had the idea for this book while lying on my back with my underpants around my ankles and some sort of jelly substance smeared all over my testicles." Jim Pollard claims in the preface of All Right, Mate that this experience came completely free on the NHS and, amazingly enough, he's telling the truth. In fact, it was a perfectly routine medical procedure. But then he wouldn't have a clue about that, would he? He's a man. Men's lives are, on average, five years shorter than women's and they are far more likely to die prematurely. It's not just bad luck. Most men wish they knew more about their health but it's not easy to talk about and much of the info buzzing around in this shape obsessed world of ours is irrelevent, incomprehensible or simply rubbish. There's a need for easy, accessible, honest information: a book for blokes who are too busy, too lazy or too scared to go to the doctors. So here it is, from exercise and sport to sex and drugs, from work and the environment to disease and death. Everything you want to know about the male body (but are too strong and silent to ask). "By far the most fun book on the subject - easy, entertaining and informative" - Dr Sarah Brewer, author of The Complete Book of Men's Health

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