News and reviews

Architecture 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”.

The 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.

Susan 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.

Repetition 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.

Matthew Ford writes in the Spectator

Added on 29/03/2026

The Secretary of War is the face of America’s campaign against Iran. ‘War is hell, and always will be’, Pete Hegseth said recently. He is relentlessly focused on lethality, and decimating the Iranian military.

Treasures on Earth reviewed in the Mail on Sunday

Added on 22/03/2026

One of the oldest poems of the English people, Beowulf, ends with the burial of treasure, but it is a melancholy moment, the hoard ‘a crumbling legacy from a lost world’, after which the survivors drift off into exile, ‘the worst of Anglo-Saxon fates’.

The Attractions of the Moving Image reviewed in the TLS

Added on 20/03/2026

A large black steam locomotive appears on the horizon. It drives forward towards the left of the screen and disappears beyond the periphery.

Decoding the Hand reviewed in the LRB

Added on 19/03/2026

What​ are the people in our lives really like – inside? Seeming and being may not be the same. Smiles may be false and vows of love insincere. Appearances are deceptive; you can’t tell a book by its cover; beauty is only skin deep.

Enshittification featured in the Guardian

Added on 16/03/2026

The video’s opening shot shows a man hiding under a bed snipping in a hole in someone’s sock. Seconds later, the same man uses a saw to shorten a table leg so that it wobbles during breakfast.

Vigdis Hjorth Q&A in the TLS

Added on 13/03/2026

Auden reviewed in the Church Times

Added on 13/03/2026

W. H. Auden was the most naturally talented poet of the 20th century. With a verbal felicity that bordered on wizardry, he could write erudite, amusing, wry, ironic, comic, or serious verse in an extraordinary range of forms.

Electric Wind reviewed in the Literary Review

Added on 09/03/2026

In 2000, renewable sources of power (of which wind is the most important) accounted for 2.8 per cent of all electricity generated in the UK. By 2024, that figure had increased eighteenfold to 50.4 per cent. This remarkable growth follows from the multiplication of wind turbines in fields or out at sea.