Paperbacks: Revolution in the Head The Irish Game Lear's Italy Flourishing: Letters 1928-1946 Dead Reckoning Lighthousekeeping The Flea Palace

Revolution in the Head, by Ian MacDonald (PIMLICO £8.99 (515pp))

Revolution in the Head, by Ian MacDonald (PIMLICO £8.99 (515pp))

It was a surprise to receive this book. By some distance the most perceptive and intelligent volume in the vast corpus devoted to the Beatles, Revolution in the Head was first published in 1994. In his preface to the first revision, published in 1997, Ian MacDonald wrote firmly: "There will be no third edition." Though this edition adds little more than a further new preface together with "a number of corrected details" (chiefly concerning McCartney's contributions), it is still worth getting. The book is more conveniently compact in size and, better still, £3.50 cheaper than the first revision. It also gives the reader another chance to appreciate the brilliance of MacDonald's writing. His eight-page tour de force on Lennon's "Strawberry Fields" concludes: "Few if any composers are capable of displaying feeling and fantasy so direct, spontaneous and original." Newcomers should not skip the illuminating preface to the first edition, which contrasts Anglo-American "countercultural currents" in the Sixties: "The English delight in gloom... baffles the more sensible American mind." As far as this critic is concerned, MacDonald could have continued issuing revisions ad infinitum. But, sadly, this really is the last edition. The author committed suicide in 2003. CH

The Irish Game, by Matthew Hart (VINTAGE £7.99 (220pp))

Absorbing and fast-moving, this book about art theft reveals that great paintings are not stolen merely for ransom but as collateral for drug deals and other crimes. The scary central figure in Hart's narrative is Martin Cahill (aka The General), who filched Ireland's most valuable painting in 1986. After a complex international sting, the Vermeer was recovered in 1994. Hart reveals how a similar trap was used to recover Munch's Scream in the same year. Unfortunately, this paperback edition was not revised to include the theft of another version of Munch's Scream last August. This has not been recovered. CH

Lear's Italy, Ed Michael Montgomery (CADOGAN £8.99 (256pp))

Edward Lear's writings on Italy, where he travelled widely and lived from 1871 until his death in 1888, will strike a chord with modern visitors. Neapolitans "yell and shout - nobody in Naples speaks - in a manner quite superhuman". The food was a snip (40 roast chestnuts for a ha'penny), but in general we're better off today. In Sestri, Lear was unable to sleep because of "fleas, bugs, gnats, ants, noisy geese, fidgety sea, lightning, crying child". In Sicily, he was almost arrested as a spy while drawing. Amusing and quirky, Lear would make an excellent companion for an Italian holiday. His drawings are, of course, hilarious. CH

Flourishing: Letters 1928-1946 by Isaiah Berlin (PIMLICO £17.99 (755pp))

Anyone who knows Berlin's writing through his slightly stodgy essays will find these vivid letters a revelation. They cover his period as an Oxford don - Stephen Spender's uncle complains to him about Auden: "It's he, I'm sure, who makes him write about decaying teeth and so on" - and a wartime spell in Washington: "There is no social mystery, no social mazes. This is very grave." The greatest treat comes when Churchill confuses Irving Berlin with Isaiah. "What is your most important work?" "White Christmas, I guess." CH

Dead Reckoning, Ed Helen Whybrow (NORTON £13.99 (566pp))

In this fine anthology of exploration, Whybrow confines herself to the Golden Age of the 19th century. By their very nature, explorers tend to write in extremis. Here is William John Wills in the Australian desert: "I may live four or five days if the weather continues warm." Yet the tone in this book is often of wonder, like George Kennan describing marine luminescence in 1868: "We floated, literally, in a sea of liquid radiance." In the southern ocean, Joshua Slocum sees a ghost ship. Less wondrous is the "tempest of flame" experienced by Mark Twain. He started the blaze himself when frying bacon. CH

Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson (HARPERPERENNIAL £7.99 (232pp))

Jeanette Winterson's fifth novel introduces a raft of new themes - light, dark, Darwin and the Double - to the now familiar package of art, love and lies. Motherless Silver is taken in by Pew, keeper of the Cape Wrath lighthouse. While tending the light, Pew tells ancient tales of rootlessness and longing. Not a page-turner, clearly, but a brilliant, glittering, elegant work, charged with a lyrical, luminous intensity. CP

The Flea Palace, by Elif Shafak (MARION BOYARS £7.99 (444pp))

Don't be deterred by the long preamble to this fictional panorama of Istanbul today, seen via the inhabitants of a single block of flats. Once foundations are laid, this novel takes off into a hyper-active, hilarious trip (vividly translated by Müge Göçek), with farce, passion, mystery and many sidelights on Turkey's past. A cast of wacky flat-dwellers lend it punch and pizzazz, from Ethel the ageing Jewish diva (a wonderful creation) to Gaba, the finest fictional dog in years. BT

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