Switzerland

8 June 2026

We had a wonderful holiday in Switzerland to celebrate the start of my retirement. We started in Basel in the north of the country, next to the borders with France and Germany, where our first challenge was to leave the airport through the Switzerland exit rather than end up in the wrong country! Basel is a lovely small city, with a pretty old town on either side of the impressive Rhine river. We visited the Fondation Beyeler art gallery - a stunning Renzo Piano building set in a beautiful garden with views of the nearby hills - to see an exhibition of Paul Cezanne paintings. We also attended an orchestral concert at the Stadtcasino concert hall which featured four concertos played by students from the Basel Academy of Music, accompanied by the Basel Symphony Orchestra. After Basel we travelled by train to Wengen in the Jungfrau region - a car-free village halfway up a mountain, only accessible via a cogwheel train. Our self-catering chalet was just outside Wengen and the view from our balcony was beautiful, looking down the Lauterbrunnen valley and across the three mountains - Jungfrau, Mönch and Eiger. As we sat on the balcony in the late afternoon we heard the increasing sound of cowbells and watched the cows being walked downhill for milking right past our cottage. We had a wonderful week in the mountains, catching the cable cars and mountain railways, walking, taking a cruise on Lake Brienz and soaking up the amazing views. From Wengen we moved on to Bern - the capital of Switzerland - which has a very pretty old city contained within a loop of the river Aare. It reminded us of Edinburgh's old town, with its cobbled streets and tall, thin, many storied buildings - but with added porticos (like we saw in Bologna). We visited the Einsteinhaus museum - in the apartment in which Einstein had once lived - and the Zentrum Paul Klee - another stunning modern building, by Renzo Piano, which holds 4,000 works by Paul Klee and displays a small selection on rotation. Finally we had a couple of days in Geneva where we travelled across the edge of Lake Geneva on the Mouette water buses, giving us beautiful views of the water and showing us how quickly you can get out of the city into lovely countryside. You can see a selection of my photos from Switzerland at: https://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/Switzerland2026

'A Schooling in Murder' by Andrew Taylor

31 May 2026

Having enjoyed my first Andrew Taylor novel 'The Scent of Death' (reviewed here in May 2026) I moved on to 'A Schooling in Murder' - his 2025 novel set in 1945 at the end of the War (between VE Day and VJ Day) at a girls' boarding school in the countryside near Gloucester. This book has a very different feel to 'The Scent of Death': it is more of a cosy country house murder mystery, in the style of (and constantly referencing) Agatha Christie (with nods to Dorothy L Sayers and Margery Allingham). It's also a ghost story (with the feel of Noel Coward's 'Blithe Spirit') as the tale is narrated by Annabel Warnock - a teacher at the school who is determined to find out who has just murdered her. There is more than one mystery here, with various suspicious goings-on involving pupils, teachers, servants and others. And there are many potential suspects for Annabel's murder. But this is quite a light-hearted murder story, which reminded me of Joanna Cannon's novels ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’ (reviewed here in January 2022) and 'Three Things About Elsie (reviewed here in November 2023). A very enjoyable set of puzzles - being simultaneously investigated by the ghostly narrator, teachers and pupils - with a very clever denouement.

'This is What Happened' by Mick Herron

25 May 2026

Having read all the Slough House spy novels by Mick Herron (the latest 'Clown Town' reviewed here in October 2025), I was intrigued to read an earlier Mick Herron novel 'This is What Happened' (published 2018). This is a slight but clever puzzle of a novel. I really enjoyed trying to work out where it was going so I don't want to say too much about the plot. But be warned that this is a fairly creepy story about coercive control. The narrative structure shows us events through the eyes of each of the main protagonists, one after the other. So we gradually start to understand things the characters themselves don't. Mick Herron drops in perfectly placed clues, allowing the reader very satisfyingly to spot each of the twists just before they are revealed. 'This is What Happened' is a black comic thriller with a macabre feel.

'The Scent of Death' by Andrew Taylor

22 May 2026

Andrew Taylor is an incredibly prolific contemporary writer of historical fiction. I have really enjoyed reading my first Andrew Taylor novel, 'The Scent of Death' - a thriller (published in 2014) set in New York in 1778 during the American War of Independence. It was interesting to contrast this New York with the 1746 version described by Francis Spufford in his brilliant novel 'Golden Hill' (reviewed here in August 2017). By the 1770s New York is a stronghold of the British army, backed by American loyalists who are supporting the crown against the revolutionary army led by George Washington. The story follows Edward Savill, a civil servant in the American Department who has been sent from London to assess the situation in New York. He is quickly distracted from the wider political and military scene by a series of odd events involving the family with whom he is lodging, and finds himself investigating assault and murder. Andrew Taylor writes in the style and sensibilities of the period: while Savill is kinder and more considerate to the servants than some of his colleagues, his attitudes towards slaves feels upsettingly uncomfortable to the modern reader. The plot begins slowly but gathers pace, becoming genuinely thrilling and shockingly violent. It's well written and obviously carefully researched, giving a fascinating portrait of this transitional period in American history, without ever feeling like a history lesson. I chose this Andrew Taylor novel to start with because it wasn't labelled as part of a multi-novel series, but having finished it I was delighted to discover that Edward Savill appears in another Taylor novel, which I am now looking forward to reading.

'The Kellerby Code' by Jonny Sweet

12 May 2026

Jonny Sweet is a comedian and actor who I knew from Tom Basden's brilliant Radio 4 sitcom 'Party' - about a group of naïve students who have decided to start their own political party. His debut novel 'The Kellerby Code' (which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Jack Davenport) is a dark comic thriller which Sweet has described as 'Brideshead Revisited' meets 'The Talented Mr Ripley'. Edward Jevons is a lower-middle-class young man besotted with his upper-class university friends Robert and Stanza. His increasingly desperate attempts to ingratiate himself by being helpful seem to be casting him in the role of a servant rather than a friend. Through a series of small incremental steps Edward's journey becomes more macabre and his predicament more cringeworthy. While it might be unfair to expect a novel by a comedian to have to be funny, a novel by a comedian that specifically references 'The Code of the Woosters' by PG Wodehouse wasn't as funny as I was expecting. It's a thrilling ride but I didn't find Edward a sympathetic enough character. Jonny Sweet said he was aiming for a mixture of Wodehouse and the Coen Brothers. It's an interesting and very readable debut but the grand guignol needed a bit more light relief for me. 

'Driftwood' by Martina Laird

4 May 2026

On Saturday we were at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon to see 'Driftwood' - a new play by Martina Laird, directed by Justin Audibert, in a RSC production in association with Kiln Theatre. This is the debut play by Martina Laird - an actor who has previously appeared in a number of RSC productions in Stratford. We saw her playing an American political strategist in 'The New Real' by David Edgar, also at The Other Place, in 2024 (reviewed here in October 2024). 'Driftwood' is set in Trinidad and Tobago in 1956 as Eric Williams' People's National Movement is about to win the general election that will set the country on the path to self governance and then independence (which was achieved in 1962). The play focuses on a gentleman's club in Port of Spain, which is owned by an Englishman, managed by a local woman Pearl and her daughter Ruby, and is attracting the interest of a corrupt US Marine who wants to use the premises to store some form of contraband. The action takes place in one room of the club where the six characters interact with each other with the feel of a Tennessee Williams play. But the story of the club, its ownership, its future and the family who have been running it, is clearly an analogy for what is happening to Trinidad and Tobago. 'Driftwood' is enjoyable, emotional and unpredictable. Martina Laird's writing is strong, including a particularly clever multi-layered card game scene. But I think a little more reference within the play to the historical political setting might have helped us fully to appreciate the intended parallels. The acting is excellent, especially Cat White as Ruby and Martins Imhangbe as Diamond - the stranger whose arrival at the club opens the play. 

'There are Rivers in the Sky' by Elif Shafak

1 May 2026

I really enjoyed Elif Shafak's 2021 novel ‘The Island of Missing Trees’ (reviewed here in April 2023) - a beautifully written family saga through which she tells the history of the division of Cyprus. The British Turkish novelist's 2024 book 'There are Rivers in the Sky' is an even more ambitious combination of compelling narrative and a vast span of history, linked by a single drop of water that travels from the Assyrian court of King Ashurbanipal to Victorian London to modern day Iraq and contemporary London. In alternating chapters, Elif Shafak tells the stories of three characters in different historical periods who are linked by connections to 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' (the earliest recorded piece of literature), the Yazidis (history's most persecuted ethnic minority) and water. It's incredibly well researched, with some characters adapted from real historical figures. Narratively compelling, the three strands are obviously thematically linked but you gradually realise they are also going to have actual connections, which turn out to be quite surprising. 'There are Rivers in the Sky' deals with some grim topics, including genocide and sexual slavery, but it's a fascinating, impressive, epic tale.