News and reviews
Conflict and Loyalty reviewed in the LRB
Added on 09/07/2026
The defining characteristics of our political system – a parliamentary monarchy in a union-state – emerged in the course of two fraught decades at the turn of the 18th century, between the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland in 1707.
READ MOREA Spy Amongst Us reviewed in the LRB
Added on 09/07/2026
The defining characteristics of our political system – a parliamentary monarchy in a union-state – emerged in the course of two fraught decades at the turn of the 18th century, between the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland in 1707.
READ MOREThe Kiss reviewed in the Guardian
Added on 08/07/2026
If, on a European holiday, you get flustered greeting people – should you kiss? how many times? – spare a thought for Dutch theologian Desiderius Erasmus.
READ MOREPaul Celan reviewed in Literary Review
Added on 01/07/2026
Paul Celan, generally reckoned the most important postwar poet writing in German and perhaps any language, thought that ‘true poetry is antibiographical’, though he also insisted that not a single line he wrote was not linked to his existence.
READ MORETrinity reviewed in Literary Review
Added on 01/07/2026
Trinity (not to be confused with Frank Close’s book about the nuclear spies) is a pictorial record of the most important single event of the 20th century.
READ MOREStephen Sondheim reviewed in Literary Review
Added on 01/07/2026
Most artists can expect a slump in reputation with their deaths, but, five years after his passing at the age of ninety-one, the shine has yet to wear off Stephen Sondheim.
READ MOREPaul Celan reviewed in the Spectator
Added on 27/06/2026
Some time in the late 1950s, Jacques Derrida and other intellectual luminaries at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris were surprised to be told that the excruciatingly introverted German-language instructor they had been avoiding in the corridors for several years was ‘the greatest living poet in the German language’.
READ MOREFolklore reviewed in the TLS
Added on 26/06/2026
Did you know that until “well into the twentieth century” there was a “widespread belief that hedgehogs sucked the milk from cows”, often draining several in a single feast? That, in 2024, “Brexit means Brexit” was being shouted by footballing kids across Britain to acknowledge a terrible tackle?
READ MORERadicals reviewed in the TLS
Added on 26/06/2026
The history of the working class has held a perennial fascination for the British left, which becomes particularly intense when the Labour Party is in one of its perennial crises.
READ MORELady C reviewed in the TLS
Added on 26/06/2026
The story of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is so often a story of decorum, of what can and what can’t be written or said (and in front of whom). At the start of 1928, at the Swiss Alpine resort of Les Diablerets, where Aldous Huxley and his Belgian wife, Maria, were staying with Julian and Juliette Huxley and the D. H. Lawrences, Maria had been given the task of typing up the manuscript of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
READ MOREIran and the Revolution reviewed in the New Statesman
Added on 26/06/2026
The year 1979 is the one of the seminal dates in modern political history. As one looks back over the last century of Middle Eastern history, it is more and more clear that the Islamic Revolution ranks with the French and Russian revolutions in its significance, not just to the region but also to the world.
READ MOREThe Arab Bureau reviewed in the TLS
Added on 26/06/2026
The title of this book immediately evokes the Arab Bureau’s impossibly colourful employees, among whom Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux Herbert would certainly have been the most obscure, especially as compared to his half-brother George, fifth Earl of Carnarvon, who funded the expedition that found the tomb of Tutankhamun, had he not been offered the throne of Albania. Twice.
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