Paperbacks: Retro <br/> Remember Remember the Fifth of November <br/> King's Road <br/> The New Spaniards <br/> Saving the Daylight <br/> Life and Fate <br/> The Sailor in the Wardrobe

Retro, by Elizabeth E Guffey (REAKTION £12.95 (188pp))

This enjoyable exploration of retro chic begins in 1966 - or possibly 1896. It was in the former year that the V&A held a hugely influential exhibition about Aubrey Beardsley. One art critic described "a public stirred by reports of phallic enormities... It must be said that they were not altogether disappointed." Suddenly, fin de siècle decadence was all the rage. Though Disneyland in California looked forward with a project called Tomorrowland, Guffey insists "it projected a future that never was". Retro was a more powerful cultural surge. Films from Bonnie & Clyde to Chinatown "tapped nostalgia and an undercurrent of ironic understanding". Art Nouveau infused Sixties psychedelia while Art Deco influenced phenomena from Roy Lichtenstein to Biba. When the Angry Brigade bombed the store in 1971, its press release complained about Biba's retro style: "Capitalism can only go backwards." Fifties quiffs and drainpipes were recycled in American Graffiti; while Constructivist graphics from the Twenties revitalised the jaded Seventies. Guffrey offers an intriguing investigation of our seduction by the past, though comestibles are strangely omitted from her account. In the Seventies, more people drank in Gatsby bars than ever read Scott Fitzgerald. CH

Remember Remember the Fifth of November, byJames Sharpe (PROFILE £8.99 (230pp))

The familiar story of the 1605 plot and the gruesome fate of its instigators is deftly told in 70 pages, but most of the book is concerned with the aftermath. If the 5,000lb of gunpowder secreted by Fawkes had exploded, it would have obliterated Westminster. Sharpe draws the parallel with 9/11. Commemoration began with startling rapidity. On 5 November 1607, Canterbury's display involved 106lb of powder. Sharpe, a professor in Fawkes's home of York, explores the resonance of this noisy celebration with panache. CH

King's Road, By Max Décharné (PHOENIX £8.99 (391pp))

Touching on such colourful residents as Radclyffe Hall and Aleister Crowley, an introductory chapter sets the scene for this cultural history of London SW3's famous drag. Ranging from Mary Quant's Bizarre, where affronted businessmen would rap on the window with brollies, to the glory days of the Royal Court theatre, Décharné's book is rich in evocative detail. He reminds us that Thomas Crapper, Sanitary Engineer, at No 120 appears in Joseph Losey's 1963 film The Servant. Sadly, the fate of King's Road is characterised by the Chelsea Drug Store at No 49, immortalised on the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed. The site is now occupied by a McDonald's. CH

The New Spaniards, by John Hooper (PENGUIN £10.99 (458pp))

Though Hooper's 70,000-word update to his 1995 text includes the terrible Madrid bombings of 2004, even here the new Spain emerges with distinction. The "unselfconscious sympathy" by the Bourbon monarchy should be a model for our starchy royals. After 600 years without immigration, arrivals are transforming many parts of Spain. The newcomers are the only Spaniards reversing the country's declining fertility. Hooper praises Spain's "broad tolerance", but niggardly welfare benefits mean it is far from becoming the "Sweden of the Mediterranean" predicted by some. CH

Saving the Daylight, by David Prerau (GRANTA £8.99 (258pp))

With dusk at 4pm about to descend, this lively, funny book probes the slightly cranky business of daylight saving time (DST), first conceived by Benjamin Franklin as a way of saving candles. The First World War prompted the British to adopt the idea, one month after Kaiser Wilhelm. Farmers complained (too much dew) but the police liked it (less crime). Dithery America plunged into temporal chaos. In one year, Iowa endured 23 different time changes. Though its merits are still debated, DST saved lives in 1999 when, forgetting a time difference, terrorists in Israel blew themselves up with their own time bombs. CH

Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman (VINTAGE £9.99 (864pp))

This towering novel of Soviet life and death, at and around the battle of Stalingrad, really does rank as the War and Peace of the 20th century. Robert Chandler's fine version of the long-suppressed epic first appeared in 1985; this edition carries his valuable new introduction. As it sweeps between world-shaking events and the exquisite minutiae of private life, Grossman's narrative energy and inexhaustible humanity light up every page of an absolute masterpiece. BT

The Sailor in the Wardrobe, by Hugo Hamilton (HARPERPERENNIAL £7.99 (263pp))

Hugo Hamilton's first account of his German-Irish childhood, The Speckled People, was a beautifully observed portrait of a family caught between two cultures. This follow-up is even better. A tale of adolescent rebellion taking place against a background of the Troubles, and the "blasphemous" Beatles, it is nothing less than enchanting. CP

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