News and reviews

The Truth About Empire extract in the Guardian

Added on 05/06/2024

In 2021, Oliver Dowden, the then culture secretary, appeared at the History Matters conference organised by the rightwing Policy Exchange thinktank. He had recently urged museum curators not to “denigrate” British history, as if history were a fixed, fragile thing, akin to a faltering tower of Jenga, and not something complex, changing and robust, with fresh discoveries and new arguments forever changing our sense of it.

Battle for the Museum reviewed in the Literary Review

Added on 01/06/2024

This is a brave book, fluently written, at times almost in a torrent, about what Rachel Spence dubs ‘Planet Art’. It gives a convincing account of the ‘global expansion which, over the last half century, and much accelerated since the turn of the millennium, has driven the strategies of museums, auction houses, private galleries and art fairs’.

Dirty Real reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 01/06/2024

In 1967, the unexpected worldwide success of Bonnie and Clyde blindsided the Hollywood film industry, which then spent the next half decade attempting to adapt to the changing tastes of the new youth audience it had apparently captured. No matter that the picture took a pair of vicious, sociopathic thrill-killers who in real life were about as appealing as the Manson family and reinvented them as glamorous Robin Hood figures, there was obviously money to be made, and the studios wanted a slice of it.

The First Cold War reviewed in the Literary Review

Added on 31/05/2024

This scholarly, often original and always readable study of British and Russian relations in the 19th century is based primarily on diplomatic correspondence and records of ministries of foreign affairs, and secondarily on press sources and private archives. The book begins with chapters tracing the first encounters between Russia and England in the 16th century.

Gujarat Under Modi reviewed in the TLS

Added on 31/05/2024

At the dawn of the twenty-first century India’s intellectual classes professed a cautious optimism – verging at times on self-congratulation – about the nation’s tryst with democracy. For many, the unruly coalition governments of the late 1990s and early 2000s reflected the deepening of democratic norms and a shared commitment to the peaceful transfer of power.

Battle for the Museum reviewed in the Standard

Added on 31/05/2024

In theory, I should like this book. It’s about the corruption of what Rachel Spence calls Planet Art, that, is museums and galleries, and there’s a lot of it about. It extends from the grossly inflated prices given to rubbish artefacts at auction, to the use of cultural philanthropy to elevate the social importance of controversial individuals such as Len Blavatnik and the Sackler family.

Faraway the Southern Sky reviewed in the Morning Star

Added on 30/05/2024

In 1968, as war raged across Vietnam, the Vietnamese revolutionary popularly known as Ho Chi Minh wrote a new year’s message to the worldwide movement against the US war on the Vietnamese.

United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots reviewed in the NYT

Added on 29/05/2024

One day in 1855, a man walked into a newspaper office in Sydney, Australia, with an odd request. The man, later described as a “man of color” with “bright, intelligent eyes” and an American accent, was looking for a copy of the United States Constitution.

A Nation of Shopkeepers reviewed in the LSE

Added on 28/05/2024

A Nation of Shopkeepers is not your typical sociology book. Rather, it feels like a long letter written by Evans to his fellow leftists about how they’re not “getting” the petty bourgeoisie. It was not always like that. As he shows in Chapter One, Marxist classics – from Marx himself to Trotsky to Poulantzas – paid close attention to the socio-economic and political characteristics of the petty bourgeoisie.

Burnout reviewed in the Morning Star

Added on 28/05/2024

Burnout is now ubiquitous as a term to describe the exhaustion of working too hard in a capitalist world. But, as Hannah Proctor notes in her new book, capitalism does not have the monopoly on this kind of nervous collapse. Burnout is two-sided: it is experienced by those struggling to defeat the system just as much as those struggling to succeed within it.

Andy Spinoza writes in the Guardian

Added on 25/05/2024

The eyes of the world were yesterday, for the second year running, on an FA Cup final fought out between Manchester’s two football clubs, their fans festooning Wembley in United red and City sky blue.

This Arab Is Queer featured in Newsweek

Added on 22/05/2024

A groundbreaking book about LGBTQ+ life and love from the Arab world and its diaspora. A truly unprecedented and eye-opening insight into a community too often ignored from a group of 18 amazing writers. Perfect for those who love great writing, romance, politics and learning. A necessary read for our times.