News and reviews

Islamesque review in the Guardian

Added on 08/01/2025

From Cairo to Istanbul, the ancient cities of the eastern Mediterranean tell a story of conquest, trade and coexistence written in stone. Jerusalem’s seventh-century Dome of the Rock and its surroundings are dotted with recycled Persian, Greek, Hasmonean and Roman stonework, along with choice fragments from churches. In Damascus, the eighth-century Umayyad Mosque features intricately carved capitals from a Roman temple and relics of St John the Baptist transferred from the church it replaced.

Vatican Spies reviewed in the Guardian

Added on 05/01/2025

Popes used to control vast areas of Italy – the so-called “papal states”. But when the unification of Italy was finally completed after the capture of Rome in 1870, only about 120 acres of central Rome were left in papal possession. Popes railed against the Italian state until the Lateran Pacts were signed with Benito Mussolini in 1929, when each side recognised the other and the theocratic Vatican City was created.

On Close Reading reviewed in the TLS

Added on 03/01/2025

One of my school students, Sam, comes to my Monday English clinic to work on his close reading. He expresses frustration at the process, which seems unnecessarily mysterious to him. He knows that there is some correspondence between the details he might observe in a given passage and the quality of the analysis he produces. If I could give him a step-by-step guide to how to do it, he says – a list of things to look for – then maybe he could get better at it.

The Worlds of Victor Sassoon reviewed in History Today

Added on 01/01/2025

We are sometimes inclined to compare our own imperfect times with the Gilded Age of the late 19th century: global elites wielding extraordinary political and economic power, a yawning gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else, cities plagued with shocking inequalities.