News and reviews

Stephen Sondheim reviewed in the Guardian

Added on 21/05/2026

Among the many great pleasures of Daniel Okrent’s new biography of Stephen Sondheim – a book perfectly weighted between the gossipy and erudite – is its rendering of the milieu beyond its immediate subject.

Caroline Aherne reviewed in the Guardian

Added on 20/05/2026

From the 1990s until her tragically early death in 2016, Caroline Aherne was a fixture of British primetime television. This new study of her work reminds us of the punk spirit behind it all. Aherne was the deceptively vicious chatshow host Mrs Merton.

Love and Terror reviewed in the Telegraph

Added on 19/05/2026

Marked by Time reviewed in Nature

Added on 18/05/2026

In Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of the 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, gang leader Alex DeLarge is portrayed as an ultraviolent miscreant. Once imprisoned, he is subjected to aversion therapy, which serves only to reinforce the deeply rooted nature of his criminal disposition.

Andrew Curran writes in the Big Issue

Added on 17/05/2026

Writing or teaching about the subject of this book, the history of race, is no longer simply about the past; it is decidedly about our present. Yet it remains imperative to go back to the 18th century and even earlier to understand where the most dangerous idea ever invented came from.

What Did You Hear reviewed in Prospect

Added on 15/05/2026

Here we go again. Back to “Yesterday”. Back to “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. Except: today looks very much like yesterday and those times ain’t a-changed one bit. The pop charts are still dominated by semi-literate two-chord jingles.

Out of the Depths reviewed in the Jewish Chronicle

Added on 14/05/2026

Mima’amakim (translating as Out of the Depths) is the title given to a small Yiddish pamphlet containing 20 folk songs from the camps and ghettos of Poland that was published in a small print run of 500 in 1945. The pamphlet was divided into three sections: Despair; Hope/Safety; Battle and Victory. Understandably, the third was the shortest.

Laura Beers writes in the Morning Star

Added on 12/05/2026

At some point in the next several months, I am hoping to receive a modest cheque as a member of the class covered in the class-action settlement Bartz v Anthropic.

Lady C reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 09/05/2026

Lady Chatterley’s Lover was written in a villa outside Florence during the winter of 1927-28, two years after D.H. Lawrence was diagnosed with TB.

Masquerade reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 09/05/2026

In the satirical print ‘Remarkable Characters at Mrs Cornely’s Masquerade’ from February 1771, the Georgian craze for dressing up as fantastical characters is shown in all its theatricality and wild invention.

Trinity reviewed in Nature

Added on 08/05/2026

Many books describe how the first atomic bomb was built. But this history by Emily Seyl stands apart. It tells the story of the bomb’s Trinity test in New Mexico in July 1945 through restored photographs from the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s National Security Research Center, where Seyl works.

Radicals reviewed in the Literary Review

Added on 08/05/2026

In 1923, a young miner named William Davison was killed crossing Dawdon Colliery pit yard when falling timber fractured his skull. Because his widow had never been to Newcastle before, a union official met her at the bus stop to take her to the solicitors.