News and reviews

General Hastings “Pug” Ismay reviewed in the TLS

Added on 23/08/2024

Field Marshal Lord Slim once wrote: “moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage”. General Sir Hastings “Pug” Ismay, the subject of John Kiszely’s new biography, possessed moral courage by the bucketful. As Winston Churchill’s long-suffering wartime chief of staff, he was positioned between the prime minister and the service chiefs, acting as a lightning conductor between these two warring factions.

Brendan Simms writes in the New Statesman

Added on 21/08/2024

In Ukraine, the summer often brings surprises. Nobody predicted that at the end of August 2022, Ukrainian forces would begin the offensive that would push the Russians out of Kherson in the south; a few days later, they struck in the north-east around Kharkhiv and ejected the Russians from most of the territory they had taken in that area at the beginning of the war.

Shiraz Maher writes in the New Statesman

Added on 17/08/2024

It feels like everyone already knows Anjem Choudary. After being dubbed Britain’s “best-known Islamic extremist”, he was a kind of anti-celebrity. For the best part of two decades he was a regular feature on our airways, appearing after almost every terrorist outrage to push an insensitive, indignant or otherwise irritable message.

Herod the Great reviewed in the TLS

Added on 16/08/2024

Of all the villains in the New Testament, Herod the Great probably has the most unfair reputation. Pilate crucified Jesus; Herod’s son Antipas executed John the Baptist; even Judas’ betrayal is plausible. But Matthew, in his gospel, invented “the Massacre of the Innocents” as a parallel to the Pharaoh’s massacre of the newborns in the Book of Exodus, and the story stuck.

The Newsmongers reviewed in the Morning Star

Added on 15/08/2024

Terry Kirby was one of the founding reporters for The Independent and worked his way through various senior positions in the paper. He now teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on journalism at Goldsmiths.

As such, The Newsmongers is a broadsheet journalist’s account of tabloid journalism. It focuses on the narrative of the story, keeps the who-what-when-why-how front and centre, has many central villains, and few heroes.

Shiraz Maher writes in the New Statesman

Added on 12/08/2024

It has been almost 20 years since the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London, which killed 52 people. A suicide video filmed by the British-Pakistani ringleader of the attacks, Mohammad Sidique Khan, sought to justify his terrorism as retaliation for “the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people”.

Behind the Privet Hedge reviewed in the TLS

Added on 09/08/2024

The title Behind the Privet Hedge implies secrets of the net-curtain-twitching variety, but Michael Gilson’s book is actually about looking out rather than looking in. It is about community rather than privacy (though the latter is a theme that increases in importance).

The Design of Books reviewed in the TLS

Added on 09/08/2024

Have you ever had to look up words such as “verso”, “recto”, “pica” or “serif”? Wondered why the type is easy to read in some books, but leaves you exhausted after a paragraph in others? Questioned what is going on with all those blank pages at the back? Here at last is an excellent layperson’s introduction to the often opaque world of book design.

All Mapped Out reviewed in the TLS

Added on 09/08/2024

All Mapped Out by Mike Duggan also starts from the premiss that “maps do different things for different people”. A researcher in digital culture and society, Duggan believes that “the power of maps to influence minds is not an exact science”, so he takes a qualitative, nuanced approach.

Liberty’s Grid reviewed in the TLS

Added on 09/08/2024

For more than 500 years people have tried to map Utopia. The first attempt appeared in 1516, illustrating Thomas More’s account of a perfectionist human community, for which he coined the word (and concept) of utopia. The map shows a crescent-shaped island with cities scattered unevenly around its ragged coastlines.

The Newsmongers reviewed in the Observer

Added on 04/08/2024

The average Observer reader might be unfamiliar with contemporary tabloid newspapers, but in this informative – if overlong – survey of that subsection of journalism, Terry Kirby studies everyone from Daniel Defoe to Rupert Murdoch, ruthlessly dissecting their venality and opportunism.

There Be Stone Dragons reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 03/08/2024

This book offers a challenge. John Stewart, a retired architect now an architectural historian, encourages us when we walk the city streets to raise our eyes to parapet level and open our minds to the incredible ornamental detail and range of symbols that bedeck major public and institutional buildings.