News and reviews

Treasures on Earth reviewed in the Mail on Sunday

Added on 22/03/2026

One of the oldest poems of the English people, Beowulf, ends with the burial of treasure, but it is a melancholy moment, the hoard ‘a crumbling legacy from a lost world’, after which the survivors drift off into exile, ‘the worst of Anglo-Saxon fates’.

The Attractions of the Moving Image reviewed in the TLS

Added on 20/03/2026

A large black steam locomotive appears on the horizon. It drives forward towards the left of the screen and disappears beyond the periphery.

Decoding the Hand reviewed in the LRB

Added on 19/03/2026

What​ are the people in our lives really like – inside? Seeming and being may not be the same. Smiles may be false and vows of love insincere. Appearances are deceptive; you can’t tell a book by its cover; beauty is only skin deep.

Enshittification featured in the Guardian

Added on 16/03/2026

The video’s opening shot shows a man hiding under a bed snipping in a hole in someone’s sock. Seconds later, the same man uses a saw to shorten a table leg so that it wobbles during breakfast.

Vigdis Hjorth Q&A in the TLS

Added on 13/03/2026

Auden reviewed in the Church Times

Added on 13/03/2026

W. H. Auden was the most naturally talented poet of the 20th century. With a verbal felicity that bordered on wizardry, he could write erudite, amusing, wry, ironic, comic, or serious verse in an extraordinary range of forms.

Electric Wind reviewed in the Literary Review

Added on 09/03/2026

In 2000, renewable sources of power (of which wind is the most important) accounted for 2.8 per cent of all electricity generated in the UK. By 2024, that figure had increased eighteenfold to 50.4 per cent. This remarkable growth follows from the multiplication of wind turbines in fields or out at sea.

Holbein reviewed in the TLS

Added on 06/03/2026

Yesterday I was in Mr. Jones’s church to help get everything ready for this evening. A vicar from Leicester will be giving a lecture on the Reformation and illustrating it with a magic lantern showing scenes from that period. I’ve already seen some of the plates, they’re in the manner of Holbein.

Social Murder? featured in the Guardian

Added on 06/03/2026

My guess is you keep across the news. You know Andy Mountbatten-Windsor has just had the worst birthday ever; that tall hotels in Dubai don’t make for a great holiday right now; and that Keir Starmer’s engagements diary for 2027 will be remarkably clear.

Lying Abroad reviewed in the London Review of Books

Added on 05/03/2026

Inscribed in Latin​ on a large floor slab in the chapel of Eton College is a memorial to a former provost, Sir Henry Wotton, who died, aged 71, in December 1639: ‘Here lies the first author of this sentiment: The itch of disputation is the scab of the churches. Inquire his name elsewhere.’

Frida reviewed in the Art Newspaper

Added on 03/03/2026

Frida Kahlo’s face and art are recognised worldwide, but that was not always the case. “How and why did this evolution happen?” asks Mari Carmen Ramírez, the lead curator of the exhibition Frida: The Making of an Icon at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (until 17 May), in this accompanying catalogue.

The Master of Contradictions reviewed in the Morning Star

Added on 03/03/2026

This is a whole new genre – a kind of Netflix-style academic book which reads scenically yet delivers a powerful historical analysis, fully referenced.