News and reviews

Apocalypse Baroque reviewed in the TLS

Added on 02/10/2026

Four and a half years into Russia’s war against Ukraine, the speculation is: how will it end? Startlingly, the Ukrainians may be the ones to decide. Their army is inflicting more than 1,000 Russian casualties a day along the front, and with brilliantly planned attacks on Russian oil refineries, weapons factories, economic hubs, the Russian navy in the Black Sea and occupied Crimea, the impetus is set to continue.

97 Fights reviewed in the TLS

Added on 02/10/2026

The long-awaited fight between the British former world heavyweight champions Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua is within touching distance after their recent, lacklustre wins over Mariusz Wach and Kristian Prenga respectively. Neither contest could rival the fight it is supposed to lead towards. That is the point.

The Fifth Crusade reviewed in the TLS

Added on 02/10/2026

What has a battle fought in what is now southeast Turkmenistan in May 1040 to do with the fall of Jerusalem to the First Crusade in July 1099? A great deal, says Nicholas Morton, whose new book examines the westerners’ conquests in the Levant between the crusaders’ arrival in Syria in 1097 and Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem in 1187.

Silence Dressed in Cyrillic Letters reviewed in the TLS

Added on 02/10/2026

“War is a myopic seamstress”, Iya Kiva wrote in 2021, a year before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “who keeps cutting language after language from our tongue”. These lines, beautifully translated into English by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk, are especially resonant for those who, like Kiva, know both Ukrainian, the language in which they were composed, and Russian, the language the poet grew up speaking in eastern Ukraine, but in which she now refuses to write.

Sophie Oliver writes in the TLS

Added on 02/10/2026

At the ambivalent heart of “A Fable for Christians”, which Rebecca West wrote in 1916, is a dress. It is a “mad” confection in green and blue stripes, “designed by a scatter-brained person who was thinking of the waves, early Victorian fashion, the wild formality of an elfin court”.

A Thousand Miracles reviewed in the TLS

Added on 02/10/2026

By any measure, Theodor Meron has led an extraordinary life. Born to a Jewish family in the Polish town of Kalisz, he was nine when Hitler’s armies invaded. He and his father survived the Holocaust; his mother, older brother and grandparents did not. After the war, he was sent to live with an aunt in Mandatory Palestine.

The Complete Notebooks reviewed in the TLS

Added on 02/10/2026

“Sadness of success”, writes Albert Camus in a notebook entry for June 25, 1947: “If everything were more difficult for me, as before, I’d have much more right to say what I say”. The success in question was winning the Prix des Critiques for La Peste (The Plague), published a fortnight earlier.

The Full English reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 02/10/2026

There were two butcher’s pork pies in my bag that also contained a copy of Lewis Bassett’s The Full English. As I began reading this investigation into the story of English food, having those pies on my person felt particularly in keeping with the English culinary tradition. By the time I’d finished the book, I was not so sure.

Lavinia Fontana reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 01/10/2026

First there were ‘no’ women painters in early modern Europe, then there were Sofonisba Anguissola (c 1532–1629) and Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1654). Lavinia Fontana of Bologna (1552–1614) took a little longer to be ‘rediscovered’, coming to contemporary public attention following an exhibition at the Prado in Madrid in 2019, ‘A Tale of Two Women Painters’ (Anguissola and Fontana), and another in Dublin in 2023, ‘Lavinia Fontana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker’.

King’s Secretary reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 01/10/2026

Tudor history buffs and attentive readers of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy will recognise the name William Paget. Others will require some words of introduction. Paget (1505/6–63) was an able and influential diplomat and administrator who rose to become principal secretary to Henry VIII.

Imperial Predator reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 01/10/2026

In his survey of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, David S Tonge sees Britain as an aggressive superpower, hence the title of his excellent book. My one quibble is zoological. ‘Predator’ may not be quite the right word.

William Morris and His Gardens reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 01/10/2026

In his quest for beauty, both in nature and in his own productions, William Morris involved onlookers in what W B Yeats called ‘the heavy sweetness of this dream’. The reputation endures. The bearded sage of Walthamstow remains bathed in a honeyed glow of artistic idealism.