News and reviews
Amedeo Modigliani feature and author interview in Art Newspaper
Added on 14/04/2026
After almost 30 years, several legal battles and a few death threats, Marc Restellini’s catalogue raisonné of Amedeo Modigliani’s oil paintings is finally published today (14 April) by the art historian and curator’s Institut Restellini, distributed by Yale University Press.
READ MOREPortmeirion reviewed in the Spectator
Added on 11/04/2026
The only answer to the question ‘What connects Brian Epstein, Frank Lloyd Wright, Portofino and Stevenage?’ is ‘Portmeirion’, a conceptualised village on the north Wales coast. You could call it a folly, except it is living, not dead; and it exerts a lasting fascination.
READ MORELove is Strong as Death reviewed in the Spectator
Added on 11/04/2026
In the early years of the 20th century, a young philosopher named Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) set himself the task of revitalising German Jewry – of bringing German Jews in from what he saw as the periphery of assimilation to the centre of a living faith.
READ MOREInterview with Daria Santini in Aspects of History
Added on 08/04/2026
The author talks through her background in German literature, her inclination towards cultural history and possible biographies of 20th-century women.
READ MOREDorothea Tanning reviewed in the Spectator
Added on 08/04/2026
I received this book for review on the same day that Dorothea Tanning was making headlines in the auction world, breaking records with the sale at Christie’s of a tiny but key early work for more than £4 million.
READ MOREManchester Unspun mention on BBC News
Added on 07/04/2026
It is the age-old debate – where is England’s second city?
This hotly-contested question over the unofficial title has fiercely divided the Brummies and Mancunians for decades.
READ MOREChapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal featured on BBC News
Added on 04/04/2026
In mid-20th Century Bengal in eastern India, some of the biggest female stars on stage were actually men.
Foremost among them was Chapal Bhaduri – better known as Chapal Rani – the reigning “queen” of jatra, a travelling theatre tradition that once drew vast, fervent crowds.
READ MOREHow to Read Hegel Now reviewed in the TLS
Added on 03/04/2026
In setting out to make the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) comprehensible to a modern audience in her new book, How to Read Hegel Now, Shannon Hoff faces an enormous challenge.
READ MOREArchitecture against Architecture reviewed in the Observer
Added on 02/04/2026
There is, writes Reinier de Graaf, an “unwavering belief that, despite all evidence to the contrary, architecture in its current form continues to represent a force for good”.
READ MOREThe Long Death of Adolf Hitler reviewed in History Today
Added on 01/04/2026
Fumbling for the keys to his Mercedes in a vain attempt to reach his carphone before it stops ringing, an aged but instantly recognisable Adolf Hitler all but ignores a hearty ‘Buenas noches, mein Führer’ from an elderly Nazi cycling past on an upmarket South American street, his arm extended in the time-honoured salute.
READ MORESusan Tomes writes in the Guardian
Added on 31/03/2026
One of the most familiar topics of our time is the trouble many of us have in winding down at the end of the day. Insomnia is rife: crossing the threshold between day and night has become a challenge for many of us.
READ MORERepetition reviewed in the Spectator
Added on 30/03/2026
‘Back then, of course, I didn’t know my parents were locked into an impossibility even greater than mine. That I was living in a crime scene.’ So writes the narrator 48 years after the strange events that unfold in this bitter, brief, shattering novel.
READ MORE