My Week in Books – 30th August 2026

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On the blog last week

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Bookish Places. I shared ten books set in places I’ve visited.

Wednesday – As always #WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.

Friday – I published my interview with author Thomas Messel about his historical novel The Nightingale of Bath.

New on my shelves

Agrippa by Robert Harris (Hutchinson Heinemann)

Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, whom he has made his heir.

The other is Octavius’s closest friend, Agrippa.

To claim Octavius’s inheritance, they must fight the giant figures of the Roman Empire – and, against all odds, they win. Octavius becomes the Emperor Augustus. For twenty years, they rule the world together.

Now Agrippa is fifty. Ailing and alone, betrayed by his wife’s infidelity, he takes refuge in his house on the Bay of Naples and begins to write his memoirs. Yet to stir up the past can be dangerous. From his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar, through the epic conflict with Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the great naval battle of Actium and the endless wars to expand the empire, he describes how one man has dominated his life: the cunning, ruthless, unknowable Octavius.

The Farther Shore by Seth Fleisher (Green City Books via NetGalley)

Southern Africa, turn of the twentieth century. Marais is a brilliant naturalist and iconoclastic journalist whose evolving theories about memory, addiction, and the hive mind are decades ahead of their time. But when tragedy strikes, he disappears into a remote African forest – leaving behind his newborn child and his conscience, and embarking on research that will haunt both their lives.

Thirty years later, his son Charles – now a professor of ancient Buddhist history at Harvard – discovers that the university’s most powerful faculty are mining his father’s research to bolster theories of racial hierarchy. Accompanied by a mysterious Jewish graduate student whose fate has become entangled with his own, Charles must journey to South Africa to confront his father, heal his fractured past, and stop a sinister plot taking root at the world’s most prestigious institution.

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading Farewell to Eden by Sebastian Faulks from my NetGalley shelf and an ARC of historical mystery Seething Lane by Jack Jewers.

Look out for…

  • Book Review: Conqueror (Agricola #4) by Simon Turney
  • Book Review: Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson

A bookish chat with Thomas Messel, author of The Nightingale of Bath

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I’m delighted to welcome author Thomas Messel to What Cathy Read Next today to talk about his historical novel, The Nightingale of Bath, based on the life of soprano and society beauty, Elizabeth Linley.

Enticingly subtitled ‘Love, Jealousy, Betrayal and Revolution in Georgian England’, The Nightingale of Bath is available to purchase as an ebook or in paperback from Amazon.

Thomas is giving a talk about Elizabeth Linley at 7.30pm on Wednesday 2nd September 2026 at The Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution. You can find more information about the event and purchase tickets here. If you’re unable to attend in person, online tickets are available.

How and when did you discover Elizabeth Linley?

I was aware of the Linley family through an ancestral connection. Although I knew a little about Elizabeth, it wasn’t until I read Alan Chedzoy’s biography, Sheridan’s Nightingale, that I realised she was a much more intriguing character than I had previously assumed. Perhaps families tend to overstate ancestors, regarding their geese as swans, but she turned out to be no goose!

What was it about her story that inspired you to make it the basis for a novel? Did you consider writing a work of nonfiction?

My original intention was to write a biography, but there were so many aspects of her life that were not covered and of which no primary or secondary sources existed. Her disappearance at the age of 17 and flight to a convent in France meant to me that she was following a well-trodden path of the time in the case of an unwanted or forced pregnancy. Therefore, I changed course and, to fill the gaps, decided that the only way to cover her life would be through a historical novel.

How did you approach your research for the book?

To start with, I covered as much primary material as possible, drawing from museums and archives, especially the Bath City Archive, the V&A Theatre Collection and the Bristol University Theatre Collection. I bought several printed collections of letters, such as those of Thomas Gainsborough, Richard Sheridan, Mozart, and Fanny Burney, as well as the plays of Sheridan and Samuel Foote. Then followed a mass of reading into the lives of other protagonists in her story: Charles James Fox, Lord Edward FitzGerald, Mehitable Canning and William Pitt.

Did you come across anything that surprised you during the course of your research?

The shocking position of a married woman at that time, who, on marriage, became totally disempowered: stripped of her property, possessions, income and wealth, with no rights over their children or of complaint against her husband.

Were there any scenes you found particularly challenging to write?

There is one in which the powerlessness of women is graphically demonstrated. It’s a scene I found agonising to write.

The Nightingale of Bath is set in 18th-century England. What do you think is key to transporting a reader to a different time and place?

I am fascinated by the 18th century and find the route in is through sensual descriptions of places, clothes and everyday events such as travel and food.

What was your favourite and least favourite part of the writing process? 

One of the many joys of writing the book was that the plot was already set for me so now I had many characters from history to play with and manipulate, like toy soldiers, into words on the page. My least favourite process was without doubt seeking a publisher.

Are there particular historical novelists you take inspiration from?

Robert Harris is my No.1. I also admire Thackeray, and the writing of Lucy Jago and Emily Howes.

About the Book

‘It gives me great discomfort to tell you that realistically you must not stay here in Bath. You must vanish.’

Bath 1772. Elizabeth Linley, wildly famous, celebrated for her voice, charisma and beauty, and painted by Gainsborough and Reynolds, the most eminent artists of her day.

Events on the 18th March 1772 leave her no option but to weave herself through the intricate world of society dominated by The Prince of Wales and the scandalous Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the precarious nature of Garrick and Sheridan’s London theatre, and the perils of political intrigue, manipulated by the rivalry between Charles James Fox and William Pitt.

Set in an age of revolution, this is a captivating story of love, ambition, jealousy and betrayal, based upon the true life of Elizabeth Linley.

Find The Nightingale of Bath on Goodreads

About the Author

Thomas Messel is better known as one of Britain’s most respected furniture designers, in which field he has worked for 40 years, and built up a celebrated reputation both in the UK and the USA. In 2011, he co-wrote and edited the study of the work of his uncle, Oliver Messel, in the Theatre of Design for which he won the Speares Book Award in 2012.

The Nightingale of Bath is his first historical novel.

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