News and reviews

The Medieval Moon reviewed in the TLS

Added on 06/02/2026

Something fundamental changed in our relationship with the moon when we realized we could touch it. With the moon landing of 1969, and earlier, with the first Soviet satellite impacting its surface in 1959, something mysterious was lost. Now that billionaires have the entire galaxy in their sights, even the wonder of those milestones feels quaint.

Serhiy Zhadan featured in the Economist

Added on 05/02/2026

Serhiy Zhadan (pictured) is not your average soldier. He is a poet, novelist and rockstar, who is used to performing in front of crowds of thousands. Anyone who claims poetry is dead has not been to his readings: some 4,000 people at a time have attended them in Kyiv.

Seeing Baya reviewed in the London Review of Books

Added on 05/02/2026

André Breton gave one of the best descriptions: ‘the rocket I’ll call Baya’. He also gave some of the worst: ‘a being as frail as she is talented’, ‘the child that is Baya’. Excitement vibrates around the subject of Alice Kaplan’s biography Seeing Baya.

Troublemaker reviewed in the London Review of Books

Added on 05/02/2026

When Deborah Cavendish, duchess of Devonshire, died at the age of 94 in September 2014, the obituary headlines rang the changes on ‘the end of an era’ and ‘the last of the Mitford sisters’. If the first was true, the second was not. It sometimes feels as if we shall never hear the last of the Mitfords.

Lying Abroad reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 02/02/2026

It was late 1606 and Sir Henry Wotton – England’s ambassador in Venice – was in the middle of a crisis. For some months past, the Republic of Venice had been embroiled in a dispute with the Pope. At its heart was the question of who had the greatest authority.

Holbein reviewed in Apollo Magazine

Added on 02/02/2026

It is strange to think that the artist who preserved so many of his contemporaries for posterity was buried anonymously. When Holbein fell victim to the plague in the autumn of 1543, the graveyard of his parish church in Aldgate was full.

A Spy Amongst Us reviewed in Literary Review

Added on 02/02/2026

If the modern reader finds it hard to pin down the man identified by his contemporary Alexander Pope as ‘restless Daniel’, it must be largely because Defoe was professionally as well as personally committed to maintaining a very low profile.

Michaelina Wautier featured in the Art Newspaper

Added on 02/02/2026

The Illuminating Women Artists series goes from strength to strength, with this volume on the Brussels-based 17th century painter, and another on the 18th-century French still-life artist Anne Vallayer-Coster, both arriving in April.

Converts reviewed in Church Times

Added on 30/01/2026

The thatched roof of the picturesque Dutch Reformed church in Franschhoek, South Africa, where we have been staying, was sprinkle-hosed the other Sunday. Wildfires have snaked across the mountains, and falling ash could spark.

The Black Cross reviewed in the Spectator

Added on 24/01/2026

The crusades bring up images of the ancient cities and harsh deserts of the Levant, of Saladin, Richard Coeur de Lion and King Louis IX of France. The crusades to the Holy Land were a consuming obsession of Latin Christianity for four centuries and remain among the most famous episodes of the Middle Ages.

Charles Hecker writes in the Spectator

Added on 24/01/2026

A most unlikely proposition emerged this week in Davos. Larry Fink, interim co-head of the World Economic Forum, proposed moving the annual gathering of the world’s ultra-elite to Detroit or Dublin.

Troublemaker reviewed in the TLS

Added on 23/01/2026

At the beating heart of the Mitford myth is the cell-like linen closet at the top of Asthall Manor, where Unity, Jessica and Deborah, the youngest of the six Mitford girls, idled away their childhoods.