Paperbacks reviewed by William Leith

Margaret Thatcher by Charles Moore (Penguin, £12.99)

It’s a terrific story, you immediately see, of the woman who became the first female Prime Minister — and it’s beautifully told. You see a different England, the one you heard in the voices of your parents and grandparents. You see what Margaret Roberts must have been like — her loneliness and her certainties. She was slightly plump and attracted men. But her first boyfriend, Tony Bray, ditched her. We keep seeing how important class was. And how confidently this woman played her cards. Her relationship with Denis is well drawn. “She didn’t leap at it,” he said many years later. This volume, which has just won the £10,000 prize at the Political Book Awards, takes us up to the Falklands. You’ll want more.

Cooked by Michael Pollan (Penguin, £9.99)

Why are we so fat? A simple answer, and perhaps the best one, is: because we don’t cook much any more. The less a population cooks, the fatter it is. Americans cook less than half an hour a day. They’re fatter than us; we spend about 35 minutes a day cooking. The French, who are thinner than us, cook for about an hour a day. When you cook, you know what you’re eating. You’re in control. You think about ingredients. You develop expertise. When you don’t, who cooks for you? Corporations, mostly, who don’t mind serving you fattening food. This is a history of cooking. It’s superb. It will make you want to cook.

Night at the Crossroads by Georges Simenon (Penguin, £6.99)

I’d almost forgotten what an Inspector Maigret novel feels like — quickly gripping, very clear, with clipped prose and expert timing. A weird thing has happened in a French village. A man has been murdered, and his body is in one person’s car, in another person’s garage. He’s a diamond merchant. An autopsy reveals the contents of his stomach — champagne and toasted almonds. Which he can’t have got in the village. And his shoes are city-clean. Maigret is good with shoes. Puffing on fags, he weighs up the possible suspects. The oddball Dane? His sexy sister? Reissued in a sharp new translation by Linda Coverdale.