News and reviews

97 Fights reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 09/09/2026

Even before boxing had its Queensberry Rules, it had ‘the Fancy’. In the bare-knuckle days when matches could go on for hours and rounds were counted by the dozen, there were always well-heeled types in the front row of spectators, laying wagers and often setting up the matches themselves between ‘their’ champions.

Desk Revolutionaries reviewed in History Today

Added on 09/09/2026

The Directory, the regime which ruled France during the closing years of the revolutionary decade, took its name from the five-man executive body that was elected by a two-chamber legislature, according to the Constitution of 1795.

The Country House at War reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 05/09/2026

Ever since Brideshead Revisited, both the book and two television series, there has been a fascination with what some of us thought of as the last knockings of the country house, as once splendid aristocratic mansions sank beneath Nissen huts, mistreatment by the armed forces and lack of maintenance during the second world war.

Bedlam reviewed in the Tablet

Added on 03/09/2026

“Perhaps it is the story that chooses the man and wraps him in it until he suffocates.” Thus observes Richard Dadd (inset) ruefully at the start of Jennifer Higgie’s Bedlam, which tracks “a year in the life” of the Victorian artist, celebrated for his depictions of fairies, that would change his life forever.

Interview feature with Arthur Downing in the Guardian

Added on 02/09/2026

Have you ever wondered why it is that most houses in the UK are reliant on gas boilers? Not what’s stopping more people from replacing them with heat pumps, but instead why and how the gas boiler became so ubiquitous in the first place?

The Age of Hobsbawm reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 01/09/2026

There was less to Eric Hobsbawm than met the eye. By the standards of British professors in the late 20th century he led an exciting life, but these are not high standards. Born in 1917, his upbringing, first in Vienna and then in Berlin, gave him a certain exoticism.

All Around Is Fairy Ground reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 01/09/2026

The idea of goings-on in the shrubbery always raises a snigger. Why should this be? It’s an innocent enough garden feature and a key element of the Regency garden, as we discover in Timothy Mowl’s new book, which pinpoints the moment the shrubbery lost its innocence – just after 6pm on 30 September 1784.

Gladys Hynes reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 01/09/2026

For the authors of Gladys Hynes: Radical Lives, ‘the process of recovery remains long and hard’. So many of Hynes’s paintings have been lost. Only a handful of her woodcarvings survive. Many records documenting her life and art have been destroyed; she appears instead as a glimpse in other people’s histories.

Haiku reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 01/09/2026

Ah, the haiku! That three-line, seventeen-syllable poetic form so dear to primary school teachers, beatniks and hobby poets – and so often banal or cod profound (‘that pestilential form,’ said Seamus Heaney).

Widows reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 01/09/2026

Like Mineke Schipper, I am a widow, though I can’t see anything ‘taboo’ about that category, given that women have no say in being thrust into it.

Sniff: Feature and author interview in the Guardian

Added on 31/08/2026

Children need a better education in sniffing aromas, a leading historian of smells has said, noting it may improve their wellbeing and help them understand the world around them.

Creatures of Story and Song reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 29/08/2026

In 2023, the State of Nature Report announced that Britain was one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries. This can have been scarcely surprising to anyone conscious of the ever-emptier countryside, and perhaps even expected for a small island that gave birth to the Industrial Revolution.