News and reviews

Ruthless reviewed in the TLS

Added on 12/06/2026

When Marco Polo visited China in the late thirteenth century, he reported that Hangzhou was “the greatest city that is or ever was in the world”, and that the revenue of the Great Khan from the salt tax was “greater than that of any Christian king”.

Unfrozen reviewed in the TLS

Added on 12/06/2026

The future of the Arctic seems more uncertain than ever. New and resurgent political actors are undermining the security and safety of the region, while climate change is dismantling long-held assumptions about permanence and predictability.

The Radical Spanish Empire reviewed in the TLS

Added on 12/06/2026

The history of the European overseas empires – Spanish, French, British and other – is often presented as one of initial conquest and colonization, followed by the slow erosion of imperial rule, then its eventual displacement by newly independent states.

The Analogue Idyll referenced in the Guardian

Added on 11/06/2026

Ten years after the last video recorder manufacturer ceased production, the first straight-to-video movie for two decades – This Is How the World Ends – was released this month. The resurgence of vinyl began long ago; sales are at their highest level for over 30 years.

William Tyndale and the English Language

Added on 07/06/2026

Every so often we are reminded of how many familiar expressions in our daily talk derive from Shakespeare or the King James Bible of 1611. We may not quite live in a world where a Bertie Wooster-type can rattle off verses from the more obscure psalms without a second thought, thanks to an expensive and not very practical education.

Gladys Hynes reviewed in Apollo

Added on 05/06/2026

Gladys Hynes (1888–1958) was an erratic radical. The ‘grandchild of a Fenian’, she believed fully in Ireland’s struggle for independence, befriended its main players and declared her intention to join Sinn Féin. But in Gladys Hynes: Radical Lives by Sacha Llewellyn, Sean Mark and Jennifer FitzGerald, the artist can also seem curiously absent-minded about her cause.

The Cancelled Prime Minister reviewed in the LRB

Added on 04/06/2026

It looks like Britain’s long-standing electoral duopoly is coming to an end. Even though Labour won a huge majority in the 2024 general election, the combined vote share of the two main parties dropped below 60 per cent, the lowest on record.

Qaddafi reviewed in the New Statesman

Added on 03/06/2026

In August 2010, 40 years into his reign as Libya’s dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi travelled to Rome. He disembarked the plane flanked by his team of female bodyguards, all dressed in camouflage uniforms. Also travelling with him were 30 Berber horses, which he hoped would take part in an Italian equestrian show, and the Bedouin tent he intended to pitch in a Roman park.

Lady C reviewed in the Literary Review

Added on 01/06/2026

The first complete edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published privately by Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Orioli in Florence in 1928. In 1932, two years after D H Lawrence’s death, an expurgated edition was published in London by my old friend Martin Secker, who told me he’d said to the author, ‘I’ll do my best.’ And he did.

The Story of Printmaking reviewed in the Literary Review

Added on 01/06/2026

Gutenberg’s Bible of around 1455 is often considered a turning point in history, and the mechanism of printing that produced it a core invention of the West. It is only recently that mainstream research has started to reckon with the many caveats this ‘famous first’ entails.

Wired Together reviewed in the TLS

Added on 29/05/2026

The term neuroscience was first used by the biophysicist Francis Schmitt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962. The Society for Neuroscience held its first meeting in 1971, attracting a scant 1,400 attendees.

Atlas’s Bones reviewed in the TLS

Added on 29/05/2026

In the Middle Ages at least, D. Vance Smith reminds us, Europeans “thought about Africa in complex, nuanced, and profound ways”. Africa’s influence on Europe has been forgotten, in other words.