Paperbacks

Henry V War Criminal?

And Other Shakespeare Puzzles

John Sutherland and Cedric Watts

(Oxford World's Classics, 4.99)

Sutherland specialises in turning boring old English literature into exciting detective stories, gathering loose ends and banishing red herrings to ask questions like "Is Heathcliff a murderer?" With the help of Shakespeare scholar Cedric Watts, he demolishes the theory that Bacon wrote the plays, which will already be familiar to readers of the Just William books (Come on, is it Ham or Bacon?" William asks the hapless lecturer). Typical questions include: "Is it summer or winter in Elsinore? Do Bottom and Titania make love? Does Lady Macbeth faint, or is she just pretending? How does a man putrefy within minutes of his death? Is Cleopatra a deadbeat Mum? And why doesn't Juliet ask 'O Romeo Montague, wherefore art thou Montague'?" It's all good fun, and as with the Reduced Shakespeare Company plays, it helps a bit if you have actually read or seen the originals beforehand.

Borders Up: Eastern Europe

Through the Bottom of a Glass

Vitali Vitaliev

Vitali Vitaliev travels to Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania in an attempt to find out why drinking in post-Communist Eastern Europe has increased dramatically since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Staggering from the beer halls of Plzen to the wine cellars of Romania, Vitali volunteers himself for the wines, beers, and spirits on offer. He discovers a post-Communist population increasingly contemptuous of the values imported from the West: of rampant capitalism embodied by fast-food and Michael Jackson tours, but also a population vigorously defiant in the face of hardship. He explores the damage of societies ruled by alcohol, where death or vodka may be the only escape.

Girlitude

Emma Tennant

(Vintage, 6.99)

Tennant was a debutante in the sixties, when that world was about to dissolve into today's so-called classless society. Marriage was her only option, but she managed to escape to some extent from the expectations of her parents. Her account of three disastrous marriages is strangely unengaging, but one reads on in an attempt to discover the motivation leading her on her strange journey through the worlds of gambling, satire and revolution, from fifties boom to sixties lust.

The Potato

Larry Zuckerman

(Pan, 6.99)

This is one of a series of publishing successes aiming to cash in on the success of Longitude, telling an historic story through an inanimate object (nutmeg, tulips and orchids are others that spring to mind). The potato has revolutionised Western civilisation as much as the car and the railway, argues Zuckerman - a crucial ingredient in the dramatic economic and social changes of the 18th and 19th centuries. He draws from personal diaries, chronicles, newspaper editorials, Government records and many other sources, but never quite succeeds in glamorising this boring vegetable.

Murder in the Name of God

The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin

Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman

(Granta, 8.99)

The authors show how Rabin's assassination by a young student, Yigal Amir, abruptly changed the course of Israeli politics, illuminating the country's failure to examine itself honestly and to face up to its own enemies. One of the most interesting aspects uncovered is the extent of American support financial and ideological for the movement that produced Rabin's killer.