News and reviews
Iran and the Revolution reviewed in the Morning Star
Added on 24/07/2026
Homa Katouzian, an Iranian-born academic, has written extensively on Iranian history; his latest book, Iran and The Revolution, covers the period from the early 1940s up to 2025, just before the current war.
READ MOREHubris reviewed in the TLS
Added on 24/07/2026
It’s not the trying that counts, it’s the winning. Such was the attitude instilled in Achilles by his father, Peleus, who urged him “always to be best and to surpass all others”.
READ MOREPhilip Roth reviewed in the TLS
Added on 24/07/2026
Philip Roth was terrified of biographers. He repeatedly excavated and transformed his life into “autofiction”, long before that term was in casual use.
READ MOREThe Man Who Read Everything reviewed in the New Statesman
Added on 24/07/2026
We were recently dished the revelation that the ever-dignified Frank Kermode was capable of befriending you in public only to befoul you in private.
READ MOREJean-Paul Marat reviewed in the LRB
Added on 23/07/2026
Jean-Paul Marat did not have many friends in politics. Most of the members of the revolutionary assemblies were lawyers, and Marat had a habit of writing the kind of thing that makes a lawyer nervous.
READ MOREThe Modern British City 1945-2000 reviewed in the LRB
Added on 23/07/2026
A friendly ghost hovers over The Modern British City, the collaborative project of a crack team of historians of urban life. H.J.(Jim) Dyos died in 1978, still in his fifties, but as the UK’s first professor of urban history and still more through his enthusiastic collaborations and magpie methods, he indelibly shaped the study of city life.
READ MOREConverts reviewed in the LRB
Added on 23/07/2026
A Catholic policeman in wartime Sierra Leone finds himself in an almost mathematical bind. It would be a mortal sin for Henry Scobie not to go to Mass with his wife, Louise, but if he does not take Communion when they go, she will suspect that he has been having sex with a young widow.
READ MOREThe Fifth Crusade reviewed in the Spectator
Added on 18/07/2026
The Fifth Crusade, which was fought between 1217 and 1221, marked a new direction for the crusading movement of the Middle Ages. Instead of invading Palestine, as the first three crusades had done, and the Fourth Crusade might have done, the crusaders decided to attack Egypt.
READ MOREKeynes for Our Times reviewed in the Tablet
Added on 11/07/2026
Robert Skidelsky was days shy of his 87th birthday when he died in April (having been received into the Catholic Church almost on his deathbed), so he could be forgiven if what I count as his ninth book on John Maynard Keynes was a tired rehash. Not a bit of it.
READ MOREThe Enchanting Lives of Others reviewed in the TLS
Added on 10/07/2026
Books about reading can feel like murky propaganda. Authors typically endorse the activity, flattering your participation, as when waiters congratulate you on your choice of dessert.
READ MOREOffa reviewed in the TLS
Added on 10/07/2026
The eighth-century king Offa of Mercia retains a place in the collective memory of both the English and the Welsh as the instigator of the great dyke that bears his name, which runs roughly along the Welsh border from sea to sea.
READ MOREThe Black Cross reviewed in the TLS
Added on 10/07/2026
Malbork Castle, once known as Marienburg, is a breathtaking sight. Rising above a bend in the Nogat River in northern Poland, the vast red-brick citadel is the largest castle in the world.
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