Born in Glasgow and qualified as a doctor in 1983, John Quin worked as a consultant physician specialising in diabetes and endocrinology and has been writing about art, music and literature for more than 20 years. Yet for 33 years he worked as a physician for the NHS in both Scotland and England. Days on the wards were uproariously funny one minute, infinitely tragic the next. From tackling fraudulent medical students to trying and failing to induce hypoglycaemia in Glaswegian alcoholics (all in the name of research), Dr Quin packs his memoir with tales of joy and reward, of getting the diagnosis right, and the disaster of getting it wrong. Chasing Chekhov's two rabbits of medicine and writing, Quin sought solace in literature, art and music, applying the lessons of Bulgakov's Country Doctor to 1980s Glasgow, when none of the patients seemed to have a full complement of fingers, and 21st century Brighton, dealing with the consequences of a decade of austerity measures. Darkly amusing, his memoir is an acute insight into the farcical frustrations and tensions of working in a chronically underfunded NHS system but also a timely reminder of the humanity of the staff who care for us. 336pp.

A manifesto of ideas for sustainable food production, the book is a tremendous piece from the award-winning environmental journalist. With the world population constantly rising, the human race is facing threats to the planet such as global warming which will have huge impact on our food production capabilities. Topical and highly informative, Amanda Little explores the past along with the present and discovers startling innovations - remote-control crops, vertical farms, robot weedkillers, lab-grown meat, 3D printed meals, water networks run by supercomputers, cloud seeding and sensors that monitor the microclimate of individual plants. She meets the creative and controversial minds changing the face of modern food production, and tackles fears over genetic modification with hard facts. On the whole, the industrialised world is enjoying a more abundant, diverse and accessible food supply than ever before in human history. Farms globally produce 17% more calories per person than they did in 1990 and while some 800 million people still suffer from chronic hunger, that is almost 200 million fewer than there were 30 years ago. Meanwhile prices have fallen. In the 1950s the average household spent about 30% of its budget on food; today it is around 13%. But according to the IPCC, food prices could nearly double by 2050 given current climate and population-growth trends. International conflicts over food resources could interrupt trade and paralyse distribution networks and shortages may be particularly acute in countries like the UK where half of the entire food supply is imported. A Silicon Valley start-up Soylent Inc. has developed a vegan beverage designed to replace the nutritionally complete meal and the Pentagon's research division is developing sustenance for soldiers that can be cranked out on demand by portable 3D printers. Sensors on the soldier's bodies will detect for example a potassium or vitamin A deficit, send that data to the 3D printer, which will then generate customised, nutrient-fortified food bars. The book is a taste of things to come and with an optimistic slant. 340pp, illustrated paperback.

Sylvia Beach was a trailblazing publisher, 'They couldn't get Ulysses and they couldn't get a drink', who founded a bookshop in Paris in 1919 which is so much more than a bookshop to this day. 'My loves were Adrienne Monnier, James Joyce and Shakespeare and Company' about the novels she single-handedly published when the custodians of morality (or men) censored it as obscene in England and America. For her, books opened the doors to freedom, shaped her thinking and feelings and gave her courage to rebel. Many lesbians who contributed to the modernist revolution chose their own names - Gluck, Radclyffe Hall, Bryher (the second subject of this quadruple biography), Genêt, HD, Colette and Renée Vivien - all breaking from patriarchy and from being the property of men. Bryher felt trapped in the wrong body and even as a child she viewed her birth gender as a trick, a mistake, and saw herself as a boy. She became a patron of modernism and the rock and saviour of her partner the poet HD, Hilda Doolittle, and funded the Contact Publishing Company in Paris, supported James Joyce and his family with a monthly allowance, gave money to Sylvia Beach, and subsidised Margaret Anderson's Little Review in New York. She financed experimental films and founded Close-Up, the first film magazine in English. She built a Bauhaus-style home in Switzerland and supported the emerging psychoanalytical movement in Vienna, funding Freud and other Jewish intellectuals hounded by the Nazis. Natalie Barney was a society hostess and the main business of her life involved lots of sex. Modernism in art upended 19th century rules of narrative and form and codes of conduct for sexual exchange. Natalie was remarkable for her exuberant commitment to lesbian life: 'My queerness is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one.' She met her last amour on a bench by the sea in Nice when she was 80. She was very rich and felt entitled; disinhibited, she did not stall at taking off all her clothes in or out of doors, and no pleasure was more intense for her than orgasm. And the fourth subject, Gertrude Stein, who with her partner Alice B. Toklas were at the cultural heart of Paris for four decades. An indomitable duo, they were photographed by Man Ray, painted by Picasso, featured in memoirs and were a sight to be seen. She was a ground-breaking writer. They were all women who loved women who formed a community around them in Paris and the great biographer Diana Souhami weaves together a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre-war Paris. A very literary biography with citations and books listed, and dozens of pictures. Pagemarker, 456pp.

Sparce, lyrical, more writing from David Park, one of the quiet men of Irish writing with one of the truest voices. Three women, each destined to play the role of a poet's wife - Catherine Blake, the wife of William Blake, a poet, painter and engraver who struggles for recognition in a society that dismisses him as a madman. Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, whose poetry costs him his life under Stalin's terror. And the wife of a fictional contemporary Irish poet, who looks back on her marriage during the days after her husband's death as she seeks to fulfil his final wish. Set across continents and centuries, and in very different circumstances, these three women confront the contradictions between art and life, contemplate their emotional and physical sacrifices for another's creativity, and struggle with infidelities that involve not only the flesh, but ultimately poetry itself. They find themselves custodians of their husbands' work, work that has been woven with love's intimacies and which has shaped their own lives in the most unexpected ways. Deeply insightful and moving with lush and starling imagery. 296pp, paperback.

A brave and ambitious novel set in Ireland and Africa, and a definitive comment on the Ulster struggles written by David Park, born in Belfast in 1953. The explorations of the protagonist's childhood in Donegal are moving. Haunted by the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and trapped in a land between the mountains and the sea, Naomi dreams of another life far away from the rainy sands of Donegal. When she moves to work in a refugee camp in the burning heat of Africa, she exchanges the city streets of Belfast for the arid desert. But before she leaves behind the land where she was born, escaping her past is not so easy. A powerful novel about guilt and absolution. 278pp, paperback.

'The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology' is the sub-title of this multiple biography of five women who arrived at the University of Oxford determined to study remote communities a world away from their own. Barbara Freire-Marreco travelled to New Mexico and Arizona in 1910 and 1913. Katherine Routledge voyaged to Easter Island in 1913-16 and to French Polynesia, south of Ecuador to Mangareva 1921-23. Maria Czaplicka journeyed from Paris through Moscow and Minusinsk to Golchikha in Siberia 1914-15. Winifred Blackman travelled from London to Cairo via Venice and Corfu in 1920-39. Beatrice Blackwood took a voyage from Port Said via Columbo, Sydney and through New Caledonia to Papua New Guinea to Melanesia in 1929 and also to the Solomon Islands 1929-30 and the Mandated Territory of New Guinea 1936-38. These are the voyages as mapped in colour on the endpapers and there are 28 further illustrations in the text showing the intrepid travellers taking tea with local officials or in a family group photograph on a rare visit home, travelling in a wicker carriage through Siberia or as students on an Archaeology summer camp. In the unchartered interiors of New Guinea amid uprisings along the Nile and on remote Easter Island, they found new freedoms and bore witness to now-vanished worlds. Through their work they overturned some of the most pernicious myths that dogged their gender, and proved that women could be explorers and scientists too. Yet when they returned to England they found only loss, madness and regret waiting for them. Following the lives of her subjects through women's suffrage, two world wars and into the second half of the 20th century, Larson's masterful biography is a revelatory portrait of a pioneering quintet who went on search of nomadic reindeer-herders who had never before seen a European woman or to work in the pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona or to live in the New Guinea interior with warriors who still made their weapons from wood and stone. Their travels were sensationalised in the press. These five women were not simply adventurers, they were intellectual pioneers, professional anthropologists who set out to study human cultural diversity as part of an academic community. On her return from Siberia, Maria Czaplicka was given a lectureship at Oxford, but she lost her job when the male lecturer she had replaced came home at the end of the war. Routledge married a man who shared her intellectual interests, but when their marriage fell apart, she had no recourse when he secured a High Court order to take control of her formidable assets. Anthropology offered all five women an escape and field work a temporary relief from the strictures of English society and in new cultures an opportunity to negotiate their own identity. 337pp, illus.

The confession of Laurence Jago, clerk, gentleman, reluctant spy. July 1794 and the streets of London are filled with rumours of revolution. Political radical Thomas Hardy is to go on trial for treason, the war against the French is not going in Britain's favour, and negotiations with the independent American colonies are on a knife edge. Laurence Jago, clerk to the Foreign Office, is ever more reliant on the Black Drop to ease his nightmares. A highly sensitive letter has been leaked to the press which may lead to the destruction of the British Army, and Laurence is a suspect. Then he discovers the body of a fellow clerk, supposedly suicide. Blame for the leak is shifted to the dead man, but even as the body is taken to the anatomists, Laurence is certain both of his friend's innocence and that he was murdered. But after years of hiding his own secrets from his powerful employers, and at a time when even the slightest hint of treason can lead to the gallows, how can Laurence find the true culprit without incriminating himself? With historical note on the year when war against Revolutionary France was one year old. 340pp and cast of characters in Downing Street, the Americans, the lawyers, the accused, the French and the writers like Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man.

These fascinating short articles from Country Life in the first half of the 20th century plunge us into a nostalgic world when gentlemen's leisure pursuits were rarely penetrated by women. "Yachting in London" describes the Peter Pan pleasures of sailing models boats on the Round Pond, while "Ferreting" is accompanied by an archive photo of a man heading down a rabbit hole with only his legs visible. "The pleasures of a cold" from 1939 describes what we now know as man-flu with uncanny accuracy. In 1900 an article praising the master tattooist, Sutherland Macdonald, promises absence of pain if alleviated by cocaine. "Hitch and hike" is a popular pastime in 1926, and the secret to getting a ride is to have a clean collar; the illustration in fact shows the hitchhiker wearing a jacket and tie. In 1934, the year driving tests were introduced, a letter to the editor suggests that licences should be accompanied by a set of rules forbidding cutting in, driving in the middle of the road, and parking on bends. Boxing, cricket, rugby and polo all elicit strong opinions, while fishing has a whole section to itself, concluding with "Experiments with fishing gut". Lord Baden Powell writes in 1937 about the importance of fitness for all in the face of the coming conflict. Hunting and point-to-point are popular pastimes among readers of Country Life, and in 1921 the Prince of Wales's first steeplechase is deemed worthy of close analysis. Everything from fine brandy to crocodile shooting is dissected, usually with advice about how to dress for it. 244pp, black and white illustrations.

A smiling white whippet wearing a Tudor ruff and lace collar graces the front cover of these artistically refined portraits of dogs which look like Old Masters. In humorous, almost philosophical texts, Tein Lucasson gives each of his animal protagonists an unmistakeable character, from the Labrador to the Pug, the Spaniel to the Dalmatian dressed as Wellington, the little Italian Greyhound with her big doe eyes dressed as Greta Garbo with a shy, all-knowing look, in full Tudor costume with human hands, slim and always happy, "Maisie has been widowed four times and lives on bottled grape juice to keep herself slim and happy (in a spaced-out way)". With text in English, German and Italian on the facing pages opposite the full page colour portraits of these anthropomorphised mix of dogs of many breeds, poodles and terriers and pugs and mongrel in a sailor suit, our favourite must be Olive, standing upright as a pensive young bride she is another white whippet. Truly a dog lover, this artist is rarely seen in Great Britain and you will either find this icky or adore his 88 quirky, humorous portraits by the talented graphic designer and digital photographer. A quality teNeues publication, 192 pages, 22.23 x 28.7cm. All in colour.
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Imagine your cat dressed as Elvis with a wild gleam in his eye and pulsating hips, or your prim and proper guinea pig kitted out as our dear late Queen, with a slightly disapproving stare and a bit of a twinkle. The artworks blend comic-con and the global celebrity phenomenon with our fascination with anthropomorphising pets. All your pet fantasies come true in this bewitching volume, where your pets "live their best lives" through the medium of fantasy. Michael Jackson in his trademark frogged jacket regards us mournfully in the face of an uncanny canine lookalike, while David Bowie as a Zigzaggy Starman looks out of the frame with his customary detachment. Ozzie Osbourne in purple specs and Gothic gear is perfectly captured by a jowly Labrador. From the world of film, Captain Jack Sparrow is a spiky black feline with high boots and a swagger, Miss Piggy has a personalised pink handbag and red bow, while a guinea pig as Count Dracula sports impressive prosthetic teeth - or are they actually his own? Sherlock Holmes and Poirot are easily identifiable by the deerstalker and moustache, the yellow eyes of Sally Bowles look out from beneath her trademark hat, and a white feline with spectacular false eyelashes makes a fabulous Marilyn, contrasting with the Blues Brothers glowering at the reader on a nearby page. Clint Eastwood's narrowed eyes beneath the battered brown hat convey the swashbuckling hero of dozens of westerns, Del Boy is unmistakeable under the check cap, Tommy Cooper has his fez, and we go back to our guinea pig friend for Dame Edna Everage with sparkly flyway specs, purple hair and a dress encrusted with bling. World leaders include the Pope, Churchill, Mother Teresa and Donald Trump. No page numbers, but about 80 fantastically costumed pets. 25 x 32cm. Text in English, French and German.
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