News and reviews

The Black Cross reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 24/01/2026

The crusades bring up images of the ancient cities and harsh deserts of the Levant, of Saladin, Richard Coeur de Lion and King Louis IX of France. The crusades to the Holy Land were a consuming obsession of Latin Christianity for four centuries and remain among the most famous episodes of the Middle Ages.

Troublemaker reviewed in the TLS

Added on 23/01/2026

At the beating heart of the Mitford myth is the cell-like linen closet at the top of Asthall Manor, where Unity, Jessica and Deborah, the youngest of the six Mitford girls, idled away their childhoods.

Crush reviewed in the LRB

Added on 22/01/2026

No modern poet has had a career quite like Richard Siken’s. His first book, Crush, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 2004, joining first collections by Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery and Robert Hass in a century-old series that still guarantees critical attention.

A Thousand Miracles reviewed in the Daily Mail

Added on 18/01/2026

If Theodor Meron had arrived back at his cramped dwelling in the Jewish ghetto in southern Poland just a few minutes earlier in June 1943, he would have been executed along with his mother and maternal grandparents.

Converts reviewed in the Church Times

Added on 16/01/2026

Melanie McDonagh, a distinguished journalist, explores why so many high-profile writers and artists became Roman Catholics in the 20th century. Her research shows that the majority of them were Catholic Anglicans who were dissatisfied with the contradictory positions held by their Church and who desired the greater clarity and certainty of Rome.

Strike reviewed in the TLS

Added on 15/01/2026

After a severe fire had damaged various public buildings in Nicomedia, part of modern Turkey, the region’s governor, Pliny the Younger, asked the emperor, Trajan, for permission to set up a fire brigade.

Steven J. Zipperstein interview in the Jewish Chronicle

Added on 15/01/2026

Philip Roth is still with us, against the odds. He died in 2018, aged 85, eight years after the publication of his final novel, Nemesis. He went out as he had lived and written, under perpetual storm clouds.

Auden featured in the New Statesman’s Best Non-Fiction of 2026

Added on 14/01/2026

Ours is the era of Everybody’s Autobiography, and 2026 will not disappoint with a bonanza of memoirs by politicians, actors and rock celebrities. Mostly they amount to solipsistic spouting.

Enver Hoxha featured in the New Statesman’s Best Non-Fiction of 2026

Added on 13/01/2026

Ours is the era of Everybody’s Autobiography, and 2026 will not disappoint with a bonanza of memoirs by politicians, actors and rock celebrities. Mostly they amount to solipsistic spouting.

Elizabeth Buchanan writes in the Spectator

Added on 12/01/2026

I recently wrote a book countenancing the idea that the United States could buy Greenland, and I have received some very interesting responses. Some are perplexed at the utility of an Australian assessment of Greenland geostrategy (I’m from Canberra); others have admonished me personally for ‘willing into reality’ US ownership of Greenland.

Unfrozen reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 11/01/2026

Donald Trump is playing hemispheric monopoly. Depending on what day of the week it is, the President’s focus alternates between Venezuela, Canada, the Panama canal – and for the last twelve months or so, Greenland.

Cory Doctorow writes in the Guardian

Added on 10/01/2026

It’s been 25 years since I started working for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an American nonprofit dedicated to preserving and promoting human rights on the internet. I’ve found myself in dozens of countries working with activists, politicians and civil servants to untangle the complex technical questions raised by the internet, and every one of our discussions ended in the same place.