News and reviews
MI9 in The Times Paperbacks of the Year
Added on 21/11/2021
A finely researched appraisal of MI9, one of the least known agencies of the Second World War, whose principal role was to help British prisoners of war escape from enemy-occupied territory.
READ MOREDangerous Ideas in The Daily Telegraph 75 best books of 2021
Added on 20/11/2021
This entertaining history of more than two millennia of Western censorship is a level-headed, salutary intervention in today’s overheated rows over free speech.
READ MOREThe Films of Andy Warhol in the Spectator Books of the Year
Added on 20/11/2021
What a treasure! It details the most courageous work of the 20th century’s greatest taboo-breaker — especially welcome as so many taboos need breaking all over again.
READ MOREHow to Blow Up a Pipeline in the FT Books of the Year
Added on 20/11/2021
…it’s Swedish author explores the idea that property destruction may become far more attractive if progress tackling the existential threat of climate change continues to be glacial.
READ MOREAtlas of AI in the FT Books of the Year
Added on 20/11/2021
One of the world’s most thoughtful researchers on the impact of AI delivers a sobering, but essential, read about how AI is accelerating undemocratic governance and increased inequality.
READ MORESpace Forces in the FT Books of the Year
Added on 20/11/2021
This, with an insane amount of brilliant nuggets, features in Scharmen’s lively history of space exploration as a colonial and, ultimately, architectural project.
READ MOREItalian Renaissance Altars in the FT Books of the Year
Added on 20/11/2021
Renaissance scholarship lives!..Ekserdjian brilliantly outlines the broad picture, but the devil in his details: how variously artists, famous and obscure, enlivened and energised this iconic structure, balancing narrative and invention, clarity and mystery.
READ MORESwan Songs in the New Statesman Books of the Year
Added on 18/11/2021
…Swan Songs (Repeater) by the Runcorn hip-hop artist Lee Scott: a bizarre B-movie of a book that feels fresher than anything I’ve read all year. It is a surrealist story written in raw prose, with flashes of moods and textures that call to mind Andrea Dunbar. You either know these working-class spaces, the precarity, or you don’t.
READ MOREThe Sea View Has Me Again in the New Statesman Books of the Year
Added on 18/11/2021
Sometimes the most necessary books turn out to be the ones you didn’t realise you needed… I was entirely captivated by this microscopic, discursive study of Uwe Johnson, a pioneering novelist who crossed the Iron Curtain but declined to fall at the feet of the capitalist West…
READ MOREC+nto in The New Statesman Books of the Year
Added on 18/11/2021
Joelle Taylor has produced one of the most astonishing and original poetry collections of recent years… It challenges imprisoning notions of womanhood by celebrating and foregrounding those who face a hostile society when they are only being true to themselves.
READ MOREA Little History of Poetry in The Times Books of the Year
Added on 15/11/2021
Carey’s reader-friendly introduction to poetry makes for a fizzing, exhilarating book.
READ MOREEverything, All the Time, Everywhere praised in The Guardian
Added on 13/11/2021
Jeffries packs a remarkable knowledge of postmodern culture into these pages, from punk, hip-hop, film and photography to anti-psychiatry, the Rushdie fatwa and queer theory.
READ MORE