News and reviews
Vanessa Bell reviewed in the Apollo
Added on 02/06/2025
In 1916, Vanessa Bell moved to Sussex with her lover Duncan Grant, his lover David Garnett and the two sons she had by her husband, Clive, who paid visits to the unconventional ménage with his latest flame, Mary, in tow.
READ MOREMedium Hot reviewed in Apollo
Added on 01/06/2025
During the second half of the 20th century the favoured metaphor for the effortless and detached exercise of power was ‘the push of a button’. It linked everyone from ordinary citizens through to the leaders of nations, for whom this same gesture could activate anything from an ice maker to nuclear war.
READ MOREMrs Dalloway featured in the Literary Review
Added on 01/06/2025
In the middle of March 1931, Virginia Woolf wrote a polite letter to a woman sixteen years her junior. The recipient, a feminist writer named Winifred Holtby, was embarking on a book-length study of Woolf’s work.
READ MORESomething Speaks to Me reviewed in the TLS
Added on 30/05/2025
At the end of Something Speaks to Me, Michel Chaouli exhorts the reader to carry on the work of “poetic criticism” that his book has been advocating. Now, he says, it’s “Your turn”.
READ MOREOur Dollar, Your Problem reviewed in the TLS
Added on 30/05/2025
In a world where many currencies circulate, one of them invariably comes out on top. Great prestige accrues to the country that issues the dominant currency. The issuer enjoys other advantages besides, such as the ability to borrow at lower interest rates, and weaker constraints on how much it can borrow.
READ MOREBeastly Britain reviewed in the Spectator
Added on 24/05/2025
This is a truly wonderful book, erudite and fun. Karen R. Jones, a kind of alternative David Attenborough, explains her purpose: ‘Charismatic and amazing creatures are not only to be found in distant places. They are here.
READ MOREThe Librarian’s Atlas reviewed in the TLS
Added on 23/05/2025
The notion of the universe as a book, an ancient trope that Ernst Robert Curtius traced in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1948), works in both directions. If the universe is a book, then the book is the universe, since (in scriptural terms) God is the Author of both.
READ MOREThe Wagner Group reviewed in the TLS
Added on 23/05/2025
In early May 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company that was waging a fierce battle for the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, posted a video tirade on social media showing himself walking through rows of corpses.
READ MOREThe Wagner Group reviewed in the TLS
Added on 23/05/2025
In early May 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company that was waging a fierce battle for the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, posted a video tirade on social media showing himself walking through rows of corpses.
READ MOREDanny Dorling interview in the LSE Review of Books
Added on 21/05/2025
In this interview with LSE Review of Books Managing Editor Anna D’Alton, Danny Dorling discusses his new book,The Next Crisis: What We Think About the Future which examines survey data on what worries the public most, finding that the answers can differ significantly from what’s in the headlines.
READ MOREMedium Hot feature in Frieze
Added on 20/05/2025
For those interested in how digital technology contributes to the general clusterfuck most of us are experiencing these days, here is a list of texts I read last year. These recommendations form a solid base with which to face the current wave of authoritarian tech bullshit, including the idea that there is or was ever anything inherently democratic in it.
READ MOREThe Most Dangerous Man in Britain? reviewed in the Tribune
Added on 19/05/2025
We are fortunate that the three pillars of Tony Benn’s socialism — for the radical democratisation of politics, the Alternative Economic Strategy, and anti-war internationalism — were explored in so many of his articles, interviews, and speeches in Parliament, on demonstrations, at conferences, and on picket lines.
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