News and reviews

The Lost Autobiography of Samuel Steward reviewed in the LRB

Added on 19/02/2020

By the time Samuel Steward began to write his autobiography in 1978, at the age of 69, he’d had sex more than four thousand times with more than eight hundred men. Each encounter was carefully recorded in his ‘Stud File’.

Love is the Drug featured in Newsweek

Added on 14/02/2020

Think of who takes drugs like MDMA and images of waved, 20-somethings partying is more likely to come to mind than a middle-aged couple sat in front of a marriage counselor, thrashing out their deepest regrets and long-held resentments.

The Order of Forms reviewed in Times Higher Education

Added on 13/02/2020

Alice sits at a table in Wonderland with three strange characters: the Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse. Time, who has fallen out with the Hatter, is absent, and out of pique won’t move the clocks past six.

Music in the Present Tense reviewed in Times Higher Education

Added on 13/02/2020

“Napoleon is dead; but a new conqueror has already revealed himself to the world; and from Moscow to Naples, from London to Vienna, his name is on every tongue. The fame of this hero knows no bounds save that of civilisation itself.”

Shamima Begum should be tried in Britain, argues Dr Philip Cunliffe

Added on 13/02/2020

Last week tribunal judges rejected Shamima Begum’s appeal against the decision to strip her of British citizenship. Begum, who is in a refugee camp in northern Syria, lost her citizenship after she left Britain to join Islamic State in 2015.

Cosmopolitan Dystopia featured in the Daily Mail

Added on 12/02/2020

In his new book Cosmopolitan Dystopia, Dr Philip Cunliffe argues that Slave markets, perpetual war and ethnic cleansing are happening in the Greater Middle East due to an obsession with human rights rather than traditional foreign policy

Drugs may be able to fix our romantic lives when things go wrong

Added on 12/02/2020

If a pill could make you fall in love and transform your romantic relationships, would you take it? Or if a doctor was able to prescribe an anti-love drug to help a break-up go smoothly, would you urge your partner to make an appointment?

Love is the Drug reviewed in the Observer

Added on 09/02/2020

For some time, it has been widespread medical practice to treat a range of psychological conditions, including depression and anxiety, with what might be called mind-altering drugs, namely selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

The Spectator reviews Calamity: The Many Lives of Calamity Jane

Added on 08/02/2020

‘This is the West, Sir,’ says a reporter in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’ This is very much the advice that has applied to Calamity Jane over the years.

The Force of Nonviolence reviewed in Times Higher Education

Added on 06/02/2020

Since she is perhaps the most influential and widely travelled feminist in the Western academy, there are few gender theorists who have not encountered Judith Butler. I certainly have, and I benefited greatly from her insights.

Bill Brandt Henry Moore featured in the Yorkshire Post

Added on 02/02/2020

Stonehenge after a snow shower. With not a soul in sight, the stark silhouetted stones brood across a white-bleached field under a dramatic sky. It’s one of the most startling images in The Hepworth Wakefield’s forthcoming exhibition.

Animation lends itself readily to propaganda

Added on 01/02/2020

Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian major-general blown up by the US over the New Year, will have seen himself arrested by Saudi troops in a computer-animated film of the ‘liberation’ of Iran from Ayatollah rule.