News and reviews
The Strand reviewed in the LRB
Added on 04/12/2025
After reading Geoff Browell and Eileen Chanin’s concise history of the Strand, you will never walk down that street again without thinking of the hippopotami that wallowed in a primeval swamp at the Trafalgar Square end.
READ MORERigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring reviewed in the Spectator
Added on 03/12/2025
In 1755, Samuel Johnson (this was before his honorary doctorates) defined the herring as ‘a small sea-fish’, and that was it. By contrast, Graeme Rigby has spent 25 obsessive years documenting the cultural and economic importance of this creature.
READ MOREPhotographing a Modern World featured in the Daily Mail
Added on 03/12/2025
Unseen pictures that’ll change the way you see the past: These rare photos from the Mail’s archive show 20th century Britain at its vibrant, scandalous and joyful best – from show girls to ‘biker gangs’
READ MOREDecoding the Hand reviewed in the Literary Review
Added on 01/12/2025
A lot of what, and who, we think we are as individuals and social beings is concentrated in our hands. When teaching the rhetorical trope of synecdoche to undergraduates, I always use the expression ‘give me a hand’ to illustrate the difference between figurative language and simple truth-telling.
READ MOREThe Complete Notebooks reviewed in the Literary Review
Added on 01/12/2025
How can we live in a meaningless world? Is there any hope of happiness, when our existence is fundamentally absurd and we must succumb to ‘revolting death’? Should we even bother with life, or just abandon the quest?
READ MOREJean-Paul Marat reviewed in the Literary Review
Added on 01/12/2025
Jean-Paul Marat lives in cultural memory as a beautiful corpse, immortalised by Jacques-Louis David, who has him clutching a note pleading for the aid of ‘The People’s Friend’ (the note was in fact a treacherous assassin’s lure).
READ MOREThe Modern British City 1945-2000 reviewed in the Literary Review
Added on 01/12/2025
On 16 May 1968, Ivy Hodge got up to make an early morning cuppa. She lived alone at flat 90 on the eighteenth floor of Ronan Point, a brand-new tower block built for Newham Council at Canning Town in the east London Docklands.
READ MOREUp in the Air reviewed in the Literary Review
Added on 01/12/2025
On 16 May 1968, Ivy Hodge got up to make an early morning cuppa. She lived alone at flat 90 on the eighteenth floor of Ronan Point, a brand-new tower block built for Newham Council at Canning Town in the east London Docklands.
READ MOREJohn Vanbrugh reviewed in the Literary Review
Added on 01/12/2025
Before he ever thought of designing a building, Sir John Vanbrugh was a successful playwright – a man of the theatre through and through. He personifies Restoration drama. His plays are racy, subversive, witty, fast and furious.
READ MORETravels Through the Spanish Civil War reviewed in the Literary Review
Added on 01/12/2025
On 24 October 2019, the body of Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain until his death in 1975, was moved from one grave, near Madrid, to another site not far away. This act was accompanied by both celebrations and protests.
READ MOREHolbein reviewed in the Literary Review
Added on 01/12/2025
It’s an irony to savour: the man who invented the Tudors was a German. If Henry VIII, his wives and courtiers exercise a stronger hold on the public imagination than their Plantagenet precursors or Stuart successors, it is because we can all picture them so clearly.
READ MOREJean-Pierre Filiu interview in the Guardian
Added on 29/11/2025
A historian who spent more than a month in Gaza at the turn of the year says he saw “utterly convincing” evidence that Israel supported looters who attacked aid convoys during the conflict.
READ MORE