News and reviews

Unfrozen reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 01/09/2025

In the abrasive new world of strongman leaders, international institutions have lost leverage and NGOs have struggled to get a hearing (many illiberal regimes have banned them as alien influences). As the authors of this fascinating book on the Arctic argue, collaborative governance of the global commons has also atrophied.

The Maginot Line reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 01/09/2025

In 1968, the French politician Pierre Mendès France was interviewed for the film The Sorrow and the Pity. Mendès France – who had escaped from a Vichy prison to join the Free French air force – described what he took to be the absurdity of the spirit in which the last governments of the Third Republic approached military matters before the defeat of 1940, which ended that republic.

Charlotte Blease writes in the Guardian

Added on 31/08/2025

We expect our doctors to be demi-gods – flawless, tireless, always right. But they are only human. Increasingly, they are stretched thin, working long hours, under immense pressure, and often with limited resources.

The Impossible Bomb reviewed in the Daily Mail

Added on 25/08/2025

It was two years ago that the Oscar-winning blockbuster ‘Oppenheimer‘ sent the message that it was the Americans, or rather one American in particular, who was responsible for the atomic explosion that brought the Second World War to an explosive close.

Out of the Mouths of Babes reviewed in the TLS

Added on 22/08/2025

Out of the mouths of babes comes the truth unfiltered. With little regard for the sensitivities of the adult world, young children will repeat what they have observed and heard, including a wide range of “swears” (at least in my house). In medieval French fiction and miracle tales, as Julie Singer demonstrates in this new book, a surprising number of infants are imagined as talking such truth to power.

The Maginot Line reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 22/08/2025

I don’t want to rain on the new Entente Amicale’s parade; it’s just that whenever we get cosy with the French, military disaster seems to follow.

Mihir Bose writes in the Guardian

Added on 20/08/2025

Are we, to echo Keir Starmer’s now infamous phrase, “an island of strangers”? No. But there is a deep cultural divide in this country, a cultural dissonance we don’t discuss but should. Witness the row about the Wythall Flaggers, the group that has erected numerous St George’s flags in the Worcestershire village to parade its patriotism. What does it mean?

Death to Order reviewed in the Mail on Sunday

Added on 18/08/2025

When it comes to the ‘exotic, tawdry, and very confusing’ subject of assassinations, there have been few lone wolves. Simon Ball’s exhaustive study shows that, behind every shot fired, there’s usually a complicated conspiracy.

Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript reviewed in the TLS

Added on 15/08/2025

Among the treasures of the British Library is an unassuming manuscript identified by the shelfmark MS Cotton Nero A.x/2. Named after its early-modern collector, Sir Robert Cotton, and the Roman emperor whose bust once sat atop its shelf in Cotton’s library, the manuscript is a little smaller than seven inches long and five inches wide, the size of a very small paperback.

Boccaccio reviewed in the TLS

Added on 15/08/2025

Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron consists of 100 stories divided between ten narrators, all Florentines who have withdrawn to the countryside to hide out from the Black Death. The ninth tale told on the sixth day features Guido Cavalcanti, “one of the best logicians in the world and an excellent natural philosopher … a very elegant and cultivated man and very fluent in his speech”.

Dazzling Darkness reviewed in the TLS

Added on 15/08/2025

Why is Catholicism sexy again? The sudden surge in interest, especially among younger people, can be traced back to several sources. One is superficial, an aesthetic engagement: the Met Gala in 2018, where Rihanna wore a beaded minidress and papal tiara; or the “Hot Priest” in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, “only in it for the outfits”.

The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism reviewed in the Morning Star

Added on 15/08/2025

Christian missionaries were central to European colonialism, providing a cloak of justice and moral authority, a model of “civilised” expansionism and colonial oversight of subjugated peoples. Governments, traders and explorers exploited this aura of ethical responsibility of Christian civilisation to the “heathen.” In England’s imperial adventures it was the Church of England that played a key role.