News and reviews

The Manifesto House reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 15/05/2025

Only when history is decarbonised and decolonised will we understand how architecture should advance. For the time being, the art and science of building design are additionally hobbled by ‘systemic’ gender bias and ‘western-centric’ chauvinism.

Winifred Nicholson: Cumbrian Rag Rugs reviewed in World of Interiors

Added on 14/05/2025

Rag rugs are friendly things. Made throughout history, some say as far back as the Vikings, they came to prominence in the 1840s with the arrival of jute sacks, and remained popular right up until the 1950s and the era of fitted carpets.

Jamie Taylor interview in the NME

Added on 14/05/2025

A new book has been published telling the story of the bizarre “Wallace & Gromit-style” DIY music studio that was a breeding ground for some of Sheffield’s most experimental future-stars of the ’70s and ’80s.

The Catastrophe Hour featured in the Observer

Added on 11/05/2025

On 8 January of this year, the house I was renting in Altadena, California, burned down in one of the seven wildfires that ripped through the Los Angeles area that week. In the bigger picture, the loss of my house seems almost incidental.

Medium Hot reviewed in the Morning Star

Added on 09/05/2025

Is AI fuelling cultural stagnation, and how quickly are we sacrificing the planet in the process? These are the kind of questions that surface while reading Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat, the latest collection of essays by artist and theorist Hito Steyerl.

In Defence of Barbarism reviewed in the Morning Star

Added on 09/05/2025

Recently, Verso Books published a translation of Louisa Yousfi’s Rester barbare (Fabrique, 2022), giving it the English title In Defence of Barbarism: Non-whites Against the Empire. Some would call this text a brutal, crude, even savage book. My response to that charge is simple. That is part of its intention.

Babylon, Albion reviewed in Dazed

Added on 08/05/2025

Over the last few years, there have been intense, often bone-chilling debates across mainstream and social media about immigration. With the unprecedented popularity of Nigel Farage’s Reform party in the UK, Donald Trump’s executive orders in January clamping down on immigration, and the rise of the far-right in many European countries, there is no denying that migration and movement between countries are being treated as increasingly urgent national issues.

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.