Young Eliot by Robert Crawford; Barging Round Britain by John Sergeant and David Bartley; The Villa Ariadne by Dilys Powell, paperback reviews

A revelatory portrait, a spin-off from a TV series on waterways, and the story of archaeologist Arthur Evans

Young Eliot by Robert Crawford (Vintage, £11.99)

Aiming to humanise the starchy image of TS Eliot, Crawford begins his revelatory portrait with a vignette from the Sixties when "Tom" entertained a nephew by dropping stink bombs in a Bloomsbury hotel. Reeling back to Eliot's childhood in St Louis, we learn that the poet utilised the Prufrock Furniture Co in his modernist classic. Pursuing Eliot to London and his marriage to the ailment-plagued Vivien, the book ends in 1922. While Crawford views the union as "disastrous", it wasn't wholly destructive. Eliot said, "It brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land."

Barging Round Britain by John Sergeant and David Bartley (Penguin, £9.99)

In this spin-off from a TV series on waterways, the former political correspondent provides characteristically breezy introductions to potted histories of Britain's eight major canal systems ("splendid"… "captivating"…"delightful") while his producer does the legwork. We discover, for example, that the Caledonian Canal was a Keynesian project avant la lettre for employing men displaced in the Highland Clearances. Taking us back to an era when Britain actually made things, the watery tour includes poignant relics on the Kennet and Avon Canal (Huntley & Palmer's biscuits) Birmingham Canal (Borax soap) and Grand Union Canal (Ovaltine).

The Villa Ariadne by Dilys Powell (Eland, £12.99)

Older readers will recall Powell as a leading film reviewer but not perhaps her passion for Crete. This 1975 book tells the story of archaeologist Arthur Evans, who led the exploration of Minoan ruins from Villa Ariadne and his charismatic successor John Pendlebury, killed while fighting the Germans in 1941. One of the most remarkable incidents of the war took place three years later when General Kreipe was kidnapped at the villa by Patrick Leigh Fermor and others. "I liked Paddy," Kreipe told Powell. This astounding tale is suffused with the heat and aroma of Crete.