News and reviews

William Tyndale and the English Language

Added on 07/06/2026

Every so often we are reminded of how many familiar expressions in our daily talk derive from Shakespeare or the King James Bible of 1611. We may not quite live in a world where a Bertie Wooster-type can rattle off verses from the more obscure psalms without a second thought, thanks to an expensive and not very practical education.

Gladys Hynes reviewed in Apollo

Added on 05/06/2026

Gladys Hynes (1888–1958) was an erratic radical. The ‘grandchild of a Fenian’, she believed fully in Ireland’s struggle for independence, befriended its main players and declared her intention to join Sinn Féin. But in Gladys Hynes: Radical Lives by Sacha Llewellyn, Sean Mark and Jennifer FitzGerald, the artist can also seem curiously absent-minded about her cause.

The Cancelled Prime Minister reviewed in the LRB

Added on 04/06/2026

It looks like Britain’s long-standing electoral duopoly is coming to an end. Even though Labour won a huge majority in the 2024 general election, the combined vote share of the two main parties dropped below 60 per cent, the lowest on record.

Qaddafi reviewed in the New Statesman

Added on 03/06/2026

In August 2010, 40 years into his reign as Libya’s dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi travelled to Rome. He disembarked the plane flanked by his team of female bodyguards, all dressed in camouflage uniforms. Also travelling with him were 30 Berber horses, which he hoped would take part in an Italian equestrian show, and the Bedouin tent he intended to pitch in a Roman park.

Lady C reviewed in the Literary Review

Added on 01/06/2026

The first complete edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published privately by Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Orioli in Florence in 1928. In 1932, two years after D H Lawrence’s death, an expurgated edition was published in London by my old friend Martin Secker, who told me he’d said to the author, ‘I’ll do my best.’ And he did.

The Story of Printmaking reviewed in the Literary Review

Added on 01/06/2026

Gutenberg’s Bible of around 1455 is often considered a turning point in history, and the mechanism of printing that produced it a core invention of the West. It is only recently that mainstream research has started to reckon with the many caveats this ‘famous first’ entails.

Wired Together reviewed in the TLS

Added on 29/05/2026

The term neuroscience was first used by the biophysicist Francis Schmitt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962. The Society for Neuroscience held its first meeting in 1971, attracting a scant 1,400 attendees.

Atlas’s Bones reviewed in the TLS

Added on 29/05/2026

In the Middle Ages at least, D. Vance Smith reminds us, Europeans “thought about Africa in complex, nuanced, and profound ways”. Africa’s influence on Europe has been forgotten, in other words.

A Woman Named Edith reviewed in the TLS

Added on 29/05/2026

Anyone who thinks of writing a book on the history of intelligence secrets, especially if they have not tried the subject before, should begin by reading Harold Nicolson’s account of meeting Proust during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

Courting Disaster reviewed in the TLS

Added on 29/05/2026

Zoë McGee is angry, and with good reason. Courting Disaster: Reading between the lines of the Regency novel is shaped by the rage at the heart of the #MeToo movement. Beginning in a university consent workshop and finishing with an icy nod towards the White House, McGee takes the reader by way of incels, tradwives, Sarah Everard, Brock Turner, Elliot Rodger and more.

The Medieval Guide to Healthy Living reviewed in the TLS

Added on 29/05/2026

Should the Middle Ages be a model for modern life? The period hardly seems promising, with its religious violence, pandemics and penchant for fart jokes. Yet a number of books published in recent years, from Jamie Kreiner’s The Wandering Mind: What medieval monks tell us about distraction (TLS, June 30, 2023) to Annette Kehnel’s The Green Ages: Medieval innovations in sustainability (TLS, October 18, 2024), have sought to show that the medieval world has lessons to teach us.

Stephen Sondheim reviewed in the Guardian

Added on 21/05/2026

Among the many great pleasures of Daniel Okrent’s new biography of Stephen Sondheim – a book perfectly weighted between the gossipy and erudite – is its rendering of the milieu beyond its immediate subject.