26 members recommend for May

‘Never Mind The Full Stops’, BBC4, Thursdays 10.30pm
Or ‘Eats Shoots And Leaves’ gets the televisual treatment. Renaissance snob Julian Fellowes – apparently the only man left in the UK who knows how to hold a knife and fork or tie a Windsor knot – hosts a new show taking a “humorous look at bad grammar, appalling spelling and the misuse of our rich and textured language”. Smug grammarian guests for the first show were Janet Street-Porter, Ned Sherrin, David Aaronovitch and Carol Thatcher. Get your red pens out, this is going to get messy. JD

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'In Business' Radio 4
Presenter Peter Day makes business issues interesting for non-businessy people, analysing companies and issues in a warm, wry and thoroughly insightful manner. Complacent shibboleths and flabby performance are flattened as Day moves unflinchingly to the facts and the true character of the organisations and people in question. Business writing at its best, delivered in wonderfully calmative tones. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/inbusiness
TR

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'Persian Fire' by Tom Holland, published by Little, Brown, £20.00 or £8.57 paperback on Amazon
Tom Holland's book 'Rubicon', about the development of Rome up to Julius Caesar, was a great example of storytelling based on facts. Real history made very readable. He's done something similar in Persian Fire, the story of the Persian Empire. The history is less familiar than that of the Romans, but the storytelling is equally compelling. And there are all sorts of relevant parallels with the modern world. JS

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'Undercover Surrealism: Picasso, Miro, Masson and the vision of Georges Bataille'
Hayward Gallery, London; until 30 July 2006
A slightly misleading title for this excellent new show: it is surrealism but from a differing, skewed angle, rather than 'undercover'. And Bataille, as editor, archivist, collector and visionary, emerges as the key figure. The exhibition explores the influential 'Documents' magazine he put together in the late 1920s, and the power of unexpected juxtapositions of subject matter it covered: rituals of violence, jazz, coins, primitive culture to name just a few – the first modern 'mash-ups', perhaps. The real delight comes not only from the various Picassos and Miros that adorn the walls, but also from the moment you realise that you're walking through a magazine, deconstructed and brought to life – real-life objects next to the page spreads where they are featured. RD

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'Apex Hides The Hurt' by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, $22.95) Published in the UK by Alma Books,pre-order at Amazon for £8.57
Not yet published in the UK but well worth an Amazon trip, Whitehead has crafted a short but punchy tale about a 'nomenclature consultant' recovering from a breakdown, and his hesitant attempts to get back into the branding game with a job to rename an American town. Themes of memory and identity are treated lightly, and while the ending might be a wee bit telegraphed, 'Apex' is worth the price of entry for some of the confections - on the evidence, Whitehead would be a priceless addition for any naming brainstorm. RD

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‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell, Penguin £8.99 or £5.39 on Amazon
One of the most fascinating books I've ever read. It's about how we make very quick, split-second decisions about people and situations, but often don't trust them. Gladwell shows how powerful the unconscious is in making these decisions, and why they're very often extremely accurate. But he also shows how they can be skewed by environmental, social and cultural influences, and how we can be aware of the prejudices that may influence us. It's packed with incredible stories, from how one man beat the entire US military in a wargame, by refusing to behave predictably, to the psychologists who spent seven years mapping 10,000 combinations of facial muscle combinations to show how our expressions express (and even create) our feelings more than we may like to believe. ‘Blink’ is both an eye-opener and a jaw-dropper, and I can't recommend it enough. MR

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This month’s plugs by Jim Davies, Tim Rich, John Simmons, Rishi Dastidar and Mike Reed. These are not necessarily the views of 26, but we hope they’re not far off the mark. Any contributions gratefully received.

posted by jim @ 4:55 PM