News and reviews

Barbara Comyns reviewed in the London Review of Books

Added on 09/05/2024

But you’ve killed me!’ Barbara Comyns’s daughter, Caroline, recognised her younger self in Fanny, the little girl who dies of scarlet fever in Comyns’s second novel, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. ‘Poor, beautiful little Fanny! her life had been wasted because of stupidity and poverty.’

Chaim Weizmann reviewed in the Jewish Chronicle

Added on 03/05/2024

For a people in large measure defined by history, with a culture that reveres great leaders, the relative obscurity of Chaim Weizmann is a mystery. Ask the average Jew on the Clapham (perhaps that should be Borehamwood) omnibus who should take the most credit for the founding of Israel and they’ll likely say Herzl or Ben-Gurion. Weizmann rarely gets a look in.

Aldus Manutius reviewed in the TLS

Added on 03/05/2024

In February 1497 the Aldine Press in Venice brought out the second volume of its great five-volume folio edition of Aristotle, one of the masterpieces of the swaddling-cloth era of print. On the last page, in both Greek and Latin, is a striking colophon: “Copy made in Venice by the metallic hand [manu stamnea] in the house of Aldus Manutius, Roman and scholar of the Greeks”.

American Imperialist reviewed in the TLS

Added on 03/05/2024

Born in Washington DC in 1864, Richard Dorsey Mohun grew up during the gilded age of US expansionism after the Civil War, when the emerging superpower engaged in acts of conquest and plunder across the world. Mohun personified this postbellum imperial violence, and Arwen P. Mohun, his great-granddaughter, brings his story to life in this compelling new volume.

Mihir Bose writes in the Guardian

Added on 30/04/2024

I thought I knew Britain in 1969, when I came to this country from India to study at Loughborough University. But I quickly realised that was not the case. For me, the last half-century has been a long process of learning. At times this was very painful. Once, I even feared for my life at the hands of football racists. I have also seen the UK reinvent itself as a much more caring, welcoming place. However, we still have some way to go to become a truly diverse society.

Housing Atlas reviewed in Architecture Today

Added on 30/04/2024

It is hard to imagine a more opportune time in which to publish a compendium on housing, given our current escalating homelessness and our chronic maldistribution of wealth, both of which give an implicitly political significance to this encyclopaedic study.

How the Spanish Empire Was Built reviewed in the Wall Street Journal

Added on 26/04/2024

“The world’s most successful empires have been engineers’ creations.” This assertion, made by Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo in “How the Spanish Empire Was Built: A 400-Year History,” seems bold at first, almost audacious. Yet within the span of the book’s first two chapters, the authors’ contention seems not only logical and wise but almost irrefutable.

Tom Haines-Doran writes in the Guardian

Added on 26/04/2024

Is there any hope for Britain’s beleaguered rail passengers? We have some of the highest fares in Europe, industrial relations are at an all-time low, and cancellations and delays bedevil the network. Britain’s railways are fractured, rudderless and without clear purpose or plan.

The Front Room reviewed in the LSE

Added on 25/04/2024

Migration, at its most basic level, means a physical relocation. However, this “mobility” entails a complex, polysemous reality whose consequences reverberate for those who leave one place for another. Michael McMillan’s The Front Room: Diaspora Migrant Aesthetics in the Home presents a poignant personal tale of materiality, memory and diasporic emotions.

Women in Intelligence reviewed in the Standard

Added on 23/04/2024

A subject that has been touched on in the cinematic world, Helen Fry plunges into the secret history of female intelligence professionals during both World Wars. From running sophisticated espionage networks and the administrative excellence of the women at Bletchley and Whitehall to landing parachutes behind enemy lines, Fry puts the oft-forgotten female heroes at the forefront of her revisionist history.

Against Landlords reviewed in the Observer

Added on 23/04/2024

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the housing crisis could be solved without building any more homes? There would be no carbon emissions from construction sites, no green fields covered over, no householders upset at dwellings appearing in their view.

Balance of Power reviewed in the Wall Street Journal

Added on 22/04/2024

Bring back the gold standard? Not on your life, economists reply with nearly one voice. Nor is the Paris-based Éric Monnet a dissenter from the academic consensus. His “Balance of Power: Central Banks and the Fate of Democracies” is a resounding defense of the Ph.D. standard of monetary organization.