Book review: Philip Hensher makes his history of the novel an epic of progress

For the author, the novel is an unmixed good, and the capitalism that enabled its invention and shaped its growth is therefore pretty good, too

Philip Hensher’s history of the British novel has energy and exactitude: two things no individual novel can long survive without. Picture: Aniella Weinberger

• A History of the Novel in Britain 
• Philip Hensher
• Pelican, €35.00