News and reviews

Ian Garner writes in the New Statesman

Added on 08/05/2025

On Easter Sunday Vladimir Putin released a seemingly boilerplate message celebrating Christian “joy and love”. The missive ended, however, with a jarring statement that expressed thanks for the Russian Orthodox Church’s “support for the defenders of the Fatherland” – an unmistakable reference to the soldiers waging war in Ukraine.

Christopher Hill reviewed in Prospect

Added on 07/05/2025

When I was a teenager in the early 1990s, one of my teachers told me to read Orwell’s essays in the hope—forlorn, at least in the short term—that doing so might prompt me to rein in my prose.

Kenneth Rogoff writes in the Guardian

Added on 07/05/2025

Now that US President Donald Trump’s tariff war is in full swing, investors around the world are asking: what’s next on his agenda for upending the global economic order?

Garry Shaw writes in the Art Newspaper

Added on 05/05/2025

Often described as the “world’s most mysterious manuscript”, the Voynich Manuscript is written in an unknown script and filled with puzzling illustrations—unusual plants, constellations, bathing women and a tiny dragon—arranged in apparently themed sections.

The Dead Sea reviewed in the TLS

Added on 02/05/2025

The problem with making the Dead Sea the centre of a historical narrative is that nobody has ever had much enthusiasm for the protagonist.

Ignorance and Bliss reviewed in the TLS

Added on 25/04/2025

According to an ancient story, King Midas hunted in the forest for the wise Silenus, Dionysus’ companion. It took the king a while to capture the god of the forest, but eventually he did. He burnt to know what was “the best and most desirable of all things for man”, and pressed Silenus for an answer. The god was reluctant at first, but after some royal arm-twisting he talked.

Maximilian Hess writes in the New Statesman

Added on 21/04/2025

Britain appears to enjoy a privileged position in the mind of Donald Trump. The President refrained from inflicting the worst of his tariff onslaught on the UK, while last week, Vice-President JD Vance said there’s a “good chance” of achieving a mutually beneficial trade deal. And this appears to be based on emotion as much as economics.

The Dream Factory reviewed in the TLS

Added on 18/04/2025

In April 1576, James Burbage, a joiner turned actor, signed a lease on a half-acre patch of land in Shoreditch. The district was conveniently located outside the walls of the City of London, with its strict controls on buildings and their use. Burbage’s plan was to build a playhouse, and he named it the Theatre.

The Most Dangerous Man in Britain? reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 16/04/2025

Tony Benn was a paradox. He was a socialist whose integrity no one questioned, as well as an inspiring, fluent, persuasive and charismatic politician. Yet his three main achievements – the Peerage Act of 1963 (which allowed him and others to renounce their peerages), his securing of a referendum on Britain’s membership of the Common Market and his democratisation of the Labour Party (which opened up the election of its leaders to all party members) – did nothing to advance socialism by a millimetre, and only the first was undoubtedly a good thing.

Multitudes reviewed in the Morning Star

Added on 13/04/2025

“Why do we join crowds?,” asks Dan Hancox in his book examining the crowd in its physical, social and psychological forms. Mob, horde, rabble, mass, swarm — there is no shortage of denigratory terms to describe large gatherings of humanity, whether their communal purpose is to support their local football team or to celebrate in shared carnivalesque joy at the burgeoning music festivals but particularly to demonstrate for or against an infringement on their own or others’ freedoms.

The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism reviewed in Church Times

Added on 11/04/2025

One of my predecessors as General Secretary of the (then) Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Bishop Henry Montgomery, proudly wrote in 1902: “These are great times and one feels the stir of an Imperial Christianity. . . Clergy are officers in an imperial army . . . full of the Imperial spirit, not merely of the empire of England but of something still greater, the empire of Christ.”

Between the Salt and the Ash reviewed in the New Statesman

Added on 07/04/2025

In 2023, a young Geordie poet named Jake Morris-Campbell walked the Northumbrian coast from Lindisfarne to Durham by way of Bamburgh, Seahouses, Craster, Amble, Cresswell, Ashington, Blyth and Whitley Bay on to the Tyne (stop for a breather), before crossing the water at Shields and on to Jarrow, Boldon Colliery and Sunderland to the Wear (Wee-ah), finally veering inland to Durham where the body of Cuthbert, patron saint of the north, lies interred.