News and reviews
Patchwork reviewed in the TLS
Added on 12/12/2025
Miss Fanny’s ferocity merited special notice in The Picture of London, for 1809, a guidebook published by John Feltham. Even among others of her kind, “the difference of disposition in the same species” was “very striking”.
READ MOREA Historian in Gaza reviewed in the New Statesman
Added on 11/12/2025
The succession of mass rallies across the UK against the genocide in Gaza form the single biggest protest movement in recent British history. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to show their sympathy for the bombed, starved and displaced civilians of Gaza.
READ MOREUp in the Air reviewed in the Morning Star
Added on 09/12/2025
The book’s black and white cover photo is very clearly a scene from the 1960s — a woman with a distinctive beehive haircut is looking out from her 17th-floor flat, carefully holding a young child as they gaze into the distance.
READ MOREHolbein reviewed in the Spectator
Added on 06/12/2025
On the evening of 6 May 1527, Henry VIII entertained an embassy from France at a lavish party in Greenwich. The festivities took place in a banqueting house and a theatre, both built for the occasion. At the feast’s end, Henry led his guests out through a great archway.
READ MORESongs of Seven Dials reviewed in the Observer
Added on 06/12/2025
In the middle of Seven Dials, an area of Covent Garden that can be crossed on foot in a matter of minutes, is a thin, elegant stone pillar. I’ve walked past it countless times, assuming it must be as old as this part of London, laid out by Thomas Neale MP in the early 1690s.
READ MOREHolbein reviewed in the Church Times
Added on 05/12/2025
The German artist Hans Holbein first came to England in 1526, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art has published this authoritative and richly illustrated volume in preparation for that anniversary.
Katherine Mansfield – A Guardian Best Biography of 2025
Added on 04/12/2025
Not all memoirists are keen to share their life stories. For Margaret Atwood, an author who has sold more than 40m books, the idea of writing about herself seemed “Dead boring. Who wants to read about someone sitting at a desk messing up blank sheets of paper?”
READ MOREThe Strand reviewed in the LRB
Added on 04/12/2025
After reading Geoff Browell and Eileen Chanin’s concise history of the Strand, you will never walk down that street again without thinking of the hippopotami that wallowed in a primeval swamp at the Trafalgar Square end.
READ MORERigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring reviewed in the Spectator
Added on 03/12/2025
In 1755, Samuel Johnson (this was before his honorary doctorates) defined the herring as ‘a small sea-fish’, and that was it. By contrast, Graeme Rigby has spent 25 obsessive years documenting the cultural and economic importance of this creature.
READ MOREPhotographing a Modern World featured in the Daily Mail
Added on 03/12/2025
Unseen pictures that’ll change the way you see the past: These rare photos from the Mail’s archive show 20th century Britain at its vibrant, scandalous and joyful best – from show girls to ‘biker gangs’
READ MOREDecoding the Hand reviewed in the Literary Review
Added on 01/12/2025
A lot of what, and who, we think we are as individuals and social beings is concentrated in our hands. When teaching the rhetorical trope of synecdoche to undergraduates, I always use the expression ‘give me a hand’ to illustrate the difference between figurative language and simple truth-telling.
READ MOREThe Complete Notebooks reviewed in the Literary Review
Added on 01/12/2025
How can we live in a meaningless world? Is there any hope of happiness, when our existence is fundamentally absurd and we must succumb to ‘revolting death’? Should we even bother with life, or just abandon the quest?
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