The Bull Canvas, by Naomi Mitchison (Virago, £7.99 in UK)

In my ignorance, I had supposed Naomi Mitchison to be some decades dead, yet she is very much alive and is 100 years old this year (a biography by Jenni Calder has just been published). A vocal Leftist, Scottish nationalist and sexual libertarian, she has written over seventy books and has led a multi-faceted life which apparently brought her all over the globe. Rather atypically, this novel is a historical story set in the aftermath of the "Forty-Five" in Scotland. Now fifty years old, it shows its age but there is a ground-bass of social indignation which makes it much more than a period piece.