News and reviews

Holbein reviewed in the London Review of Books

Added on 19/02/2026

Preaching before Edward VI and his council in June 1548, Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, reflected that ‘in my time hath come many alterations.’ Gardiner was referring to the break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries and the iconoclastic fervour of Edward’s reign, each of which represented a ‘great alteration’ of policy and sentiment.

Anton Jäger writes in the New Statesman

Added on 18/02/2026

In his 2002 memoir Interesting Times, the British historian Eric Hobsbawm offers a succinct definition of the 1900s. “Nothing is more characteristic of that century,” he notes, “than what my friend Antonio Polito calls ‘one of the great demons of the 20th century: political passion’.”

The Cancelled Prime Minister reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 17/02/2026

The subtitle of Walter Reid’s biography of James Ramsay MacDonald refers to ‘the extraordinary rise and tragic fall’ of Labour’s first prime minister. The rise was not especially extraordinary. In the first decades of the 20th century several people from relatively humble backgrounds – David Lloyd George and John Burns from outside MacDonald’s party, and Philip Snowden and Arthur Henderson (to give just two examples) from within it – reached the top or very near the top of British politics.

Alexandra Prokopenko writes in the Economist

Added on 16/02/2026

As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its fifth year, the economy that sustains it has been transformed in ways that will be difficult—perhaps impossible—to reverse without another crisis.

The Long Death of Adolf Hitler reviewed in the Big Issue

Added on 07/02/2026

Around 3.30pm on 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker. Minutes later, his still warm body was carried outside by loyal staffers and burned in the Reich Chancellery gardens. His physical exit from this world was swift, yet in cultural terms the Nazi dictator has taken an extraordinarily long time to die.

The Bagpipes reviewed in the TLS

Added on 06/02/2026

I was once introduced at the Edinburgh book festival by a man holding his nose, intoning a string of notes and wriggling his fingers around. He was a journalist and critic, a sophisticated and knowledgeable writer and a Scot. What was he doing?

Lithuania reviewed in the TLS

Added on 06/02/2026

Lithuania was the last major pagan principality in Europe, worshipping its own array of gods until Grand Duke Jogaila converted to Roman Catholicism in 1386 to marry a twelve-year-old Polish princess and become king of Poland.

Captive Gods reviewed in Church Times

Added on 06/02/2026

Professor Appiah, the author of this erudite book, gave the Reith Lectures in 2016: “discussing ways in which people’s thinking about religion, nation, race and culture often reflects misunderstandings about identity” (BBC depiction).

Speaking with Nature reviewed in the TLS

Added on 06/02/2026

In the early 1960s, India faced the prospect of famine after a series of monsoon failures. In 1968, its government launched its Green Revolution, led by an agricultural scientist, to promote high-yielding hybrid varieties of wheat and rice grown with large infusions of water and chemical fertilizers

Montevideo: A Novel reviewed in the TLS

Added on 06/02/2026

Words are poor mountaineers and poor miners”, lamented the young Franz Kafka. “They cannot bring down the treasure from the mountains’ peaks or up from the mountains’ depths.” The failure of language to live up to these – strikingly manly – standards was driven home in this case by their being inscribed in the commonplace book of a teenage girl (Selma Kohn, whom Kafka was attempting to woo).

The Fiery Spirits reviewed in the TLS

Added on 06/02/2026

William Strode is not exactly a household name. A burly Devonian, he achieved his moment of fame on January 4, 1642, when Charles I attempted to seize him in the House of Commons, along with four of his colleagues.

The Medieval Horse reviewed in the TLS

Added on 06/02/2026

Look just about anywhere in the medieval past – to war, transport, agriculture, social markers, literature – and you find horses. These living things are so implicit in sources about medieval life as often to be invisible. Anastasija Ropa insists that to understand the medieval world, we must recognize their role.