Throughout history, what has been the power behind the throne? Money, of course! Spanning thousands of years, this fascinating book tracks the influence money has had through art.

In a recent interview, French Algerian novelist Xavier Le Clerc said he feels otherness in his bones. When his father died in 2020, he decided to tell his story, from his brutal upbringing in northern Algeria and harsh existence during the Algerian war to raising a family in France. His father was illiterate and rarely spoke of his experiences, so Le Clerc imagines much of his past.

We may some day be able to answer Tolstoy’s exasperated and exasperating question: What is art? – but only when we learn to integrate our vision of Walcott on the back foot through the covers with the outstretched arm of the Olympic Apollo.” C. L. R. James’s case in Beyond a Boundary for cricket to be acknowledged as “a dramatic spectacle”, essential to the history of the Caribbean, memorably draws on the image of Clyde Walcott at the crease.

One Saturday eleven years ago, I put on an ill-fitting suit and caught a train to Gatwick Airport. I headed to an airport hotel, where a “coloured diamonds” investments firm was recruiting a new crop of salespeople. I was set a series of bizarre tasks, each of which was followed by several candidates – addressed not by name, but by number – being unceremoniously sent home.

One of the first social rules children learn is the painful necessity of sharing. After the shock of encountering other wants and needs as strong as their own, a child who hands over stickers and sweets to their peers is praised. Yet for adults in the UK, sharing and caring, a glib rhyme that packages an important truth, is no longer a priority.

The penalty kick was first proposed to the Football Association as a drastic sanction against dangerous conduct in 1891. Tabled by an amateur goalkeeper from Armagh, it was rejected as an affront to the nobility of the game. How, in a sport played by gentlemen, could there be any foul play? It was, they said, an insult to assume that “players intend to behave like cads”.

Leo Tolstoy served as a young artillery officer in the defence of the great Russian naval base of Sevastopol against British and French invaders in the middle of the 19th century. The first of his three short stories, collected as Sevastopol Sketches, came out as the siege was still in progress.

Danny Dorling’s new book is a stark analysis of poverty and low incomes in Britain today. The author rightly focuses on families with children and pictures the lives of seven children spanning the range of household incomes.

Recently published in paperback, this entertaining, thoughtful and detailed analysis of British comics from the late Victorian period to the present day is not to be missed. Written with insight and passion, if you don’t see yourself as interested in comic books then this might well be the text to get you started.

For such small fish, anchovies pack a big punch. They can be eaten on their own or as part of almost any dish, from pasta sauces to vinaigrettes. Yet for every person who loves them there will be another for whom they provoke the deepest revulsion.