Paperbacks

Cynthia Lennon has had plenty to say over the decades about her ten years in the sixties as wife of the famous Beatle. Unfortunately, she repeats much of it here, in cliches which must surely have been honed by years of newspaper interviews. The only new thing is that, having previously declined to play the role of the vindictive ex-wife, she airs for the first time some of the hurt and grief from their marriage break-up, plus examples of John's abusive, paranoid behaviour even when supposedly happily married. She also describes what must rank as one of the meanest divorce settlements ever provided by a millionaire. Their son Julian puts it best when he asks his mother: "Dad's always telling people to love each other, but how come he doesn't love me?" Indeed, the most compelling part of the book is Julian's foreword describing how it felt to be rejected by a man who preached love and peace.

Yob Nation, Francis Gilbert, (Piatkus, £10.99)

Gilbert, who started his writing career with I'm a Teacher, Get Me Out of Here, a depressing picture of life as a teacher in a comprehensive school, now turns his attention to society in general. He sees Britain as a country where all sense of authority is collapsing. He not only picks on the usual urban low-life he believes that yob culture now exists in every strata of society. So he condemns the ease with which new Labour resorts to intimidation, as well as bullying and harassment in the Army and semi-pornographic vulgarity in the tabloid press. His chapter on drunken students at the notorious Oxford University Bullingdon Club makes alarming reading he points out that many of the participants later go on to hold positions of power in the country. He makes his point, but is 2006 any worse than 1906?

Princes in the Land, Joanna Cannan, (Persephone, £10)

This novel, first published in 1938, tells the story of an Oxford don's wife facing a personal crisis after giving up her own life to bring up a family. The publishers, Persephone, specialise in reissuing books from the past with resonance for today's readers and this certainly falls into that category. It is full of interest for anyone who knows Oxford, and shows how feminism was impacting on life between the wars. Cannan, who lived near Henley, was the mother of Diana, Christine and Josephine Pullein-Thompson, authors of countless pony books for girls.

D.H. Lawrence: The Life of An Outsider, John Worthen, (Penguin, £12.99)

This perceptive one-volume life casts a new light on Lawrence's relationship with Lady Ottoline Morrell, brewery heiress and owner of Garsington Manor, near Oxford, where she gathered a glittering array of writers and artists. Worthen feels that Garsington represented Lawrence's English heritage, which he threw off when he moved abroad