Happy new year and we’re off to a bang.
Daniel Stables had a feature in The Guardian about Shetland’s Up Helly Aa Viking fire festival, which is ‘bigger than Hogmanay’.
The raucous celebration of the new year and the islands’ Nordic heritage culminates in the ritual burning of a longship – and much drinking. In Lerwick, the capital of the archipelago, the locals have divined a unique way of passing the time, while honouring the deep-rooted Scandinavian influences on Shetland’s culture and history.
The book was also reviewed in the TLS in a “A travelogue-cum-anthropological study of communal celebration.”
Daniel Stables’ debut book, Fiesta: A Journey Through Festivity (Icon Books), is out now.
Tim Bird appeared live on Times Radio about his debut book Happy Land: Finding My Inner Finn (Eye Books).
In this clear-sighted – but never cynical – sideways look at the land of the sauna, the Northern Lights and the Moomins, Bird spotlights the Nordic nation’s distinctive culture, landscape and language. As he helps us understand the Finnish notion of contentment, are there life-lessons for the rest of us?
Mary Novakovich appeared BBC Radio 4’s Free Thinking programme about Sunshine Saturday – the day more holidays are booked than any other.
From stagecoaches to aeroplanes, guidebooks to AI, the programme explores how travel has changed – and how the meanings we attach to it have shifted too. Was travel ever really a vehicle for self-discovery?
James Owen wrote an article for the Columbia Daily Tribune about his debut book The Wicked Among Us (Post Hill Press).
The story takes us back to Springfield, Missouri, where Owen once worked for Rolland Comstock: a brilliant probate and estate-planning lawyer, renowned book collector with a three-storey library, and owner of a pack of wolf-hybrids. Comstock’s life was as messy as it was fascinating – divorce, family troubles, money strains – and on 3 July 2007 he was found shot dead in his kitchen. No forced entry, no weapon, few clues, and no criminal charges.
The book published on January 20th.
Finally, Joe Luc Barnes wrote ‘Made in Kazakhstan: building an AI for a nation‘ for the Times of Central Asia. A fascinating look at how Kazakhstan is developing its own national AI ecosystem – not just importing Western or Chinese models, but shaping artificial intelligence around local language, culture and state priorities.
From digital sovereignty and education to public services and economic strategy, the piece explores what it really means to build AI for a country rather than simply deploying it in one – and why Kazakhstan sees this as central to its future.
Look out for his debut this year, Farewell to Russia – A Journey through the former USSR (Elliott & Thompson). In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Joe set out to cross the former USSR to find out. From the silk road cities of Uzbekistan to the former gulags of Kazakhstan, tech-hungry Estonia to the storied vineyards of Georgia, he traces the very different paths these nations have taken since independence.
Joe will also be speaking at an event for the Royal Society for Asian Affairs on 2 June 2026, 18.00 BST. Register for a ticket now.
Cull & Co. Literary Agency Ltd 