News and reviews

A Man of Few Words reviewed in the Guardian

Added on 03/02/2025

When Primo Levi, the Turin-born chemist and nuanced chronicler of the human condition, pondered quite how he had survived Auschwitz, he gave the credit to a gruff bricklayer called Lorenzo Perrone: “not so much for his material aid”, he wrote, “as for his having constantly reminded me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still existed a just world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage, extraneous to hatred and terror… for which it was worth surviving”.

If Only reviewed in the LRB

Added on 03/02/2025

Norwegians make a fuss about first books. The newspapers publish round-ups of the year’s literary debutants, who are invited to writers’ workshops organised specially for them. In 1983, two young authors met at one such workshop in Sweden.

Overshoot reviewed in the LRB

Added on 03/02/2025

Around fifteen years ago, a new term entered the climate change lexicon: stranded assets. The concept was straightforward enough. If global warming is to be kept from getting out of hand, there is a limit to the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted into the atmosphere.

Christopher Hill reviewed in the Literary Review

Added on 01/02/2025

In March 1941, Labour Monthly, the semi-official magazine of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), published an apology for a recent review of The English Revolution, 1640 by the up-and-coming historian Christopher Hill.

Under Cover of Darkness reviewed in the Wall Street Journal

Added on 31/01/2025

Most Americans gained their impression of London during the Blitz from the radio broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow on CBS. Murrow lionized the resilience and decency of ordinary Londoners and their heroic resistance to the Nazi threat, and his reports were a vital means of connecting the still neutral U.S. to the perils of the war in Europe.

Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers reviewed in the TLS

Added on 31/01/2025

Early in Shakespeare in Love, as Will is hurrying through London to his psychiatrist, he hears a Puritan preacher “haranguing anyone who will listen to him”, as Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard’s screenplay puts it. The preacher inveighs against the Curtain theatre before turning to the other playhouse: “And the Rose smells thusly rank by any name! I say a plague on both their houses!”. The screenplay adds a direction: “As he passes WILL gratefully makes a mental note”.

Family Romance reviewed in the TLS

Added on 31/01/2025

In 1898, Asher Wertheimer, a leading London art dealer, marked his silver wedding anniversary by commissioning John Singer Sargent to paint two portraits, one of himself and one of his wife. Sargent went on to paint all ten of the Wertheimers’ sons and daughters, and became a close friend of the family. Asher Wertheimer would eventually bequeath nine of the ten portraits to the National Gallery with the request that they should be displayed together, which they were amid controversy in 1923.

I Just Let Life Rain Down on Me reviewed in the TLS

Added on 31/01/2025

For some people, writing in a language other than their mother tongue presents an obvious advantage. No longer constrained by their usual grammatical and lexical norms, they unconsciously import turns of phrase, sometimes expressing them literally, and sometimes conveying them approximately, thereby creating an original voice.

Dr Calhoun’s Mousery reviewed in the TLS

Added on 31/01/2025

In 1967, the American ecologist-turned-psychologist John Calhoun was approaching fifty. His novel population studies of rats had brought him to international attention, in large part because the public was convinced – as was he – that his rats had something to say about the human future. Rats, Calhoun discovered, were creatures with sensitivities and sensibilities.

A Man of Few Words reviewed in the Jewish Chronicle

Added on 31/01/2025

Just when we thought the excellent biographies of the great Italian author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi had uncovered all there was to be known of his internment in Auschwitz in 1943, a new one appears. This time it is not of Levi himself, however, but of a man who smuggled food, clothing and letters into the camp where he worked, and who risked his own non-Jewish life to keep Levi alive.

Dana El Kurd writes in the Guardian

Added on 27/01/2025

Since the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza, much of the world has focused on the immediate impacts of destruction in the strip. The discussion has been focused on which bodies will administer aid, how reconstruction might start, the role of international actors and the terms of the fragile ceasefire.

Vatican Spies reviewed in the Mail on Sunday

Added on 26/01/2025

In the early 1990s a Catholic deacon called Yvon Bertorello was sent to train for four years at the Minerva, a college run by the Vatican to prepare its top priests for overseas postings.