News and reviews
Ben Nicholson Writings and Ideas reviewed in the TLS
Added on 04/06/2019
In December 1933, the painter Ben Nicholson sent a letter from Paris to his lover, Barbara Hepworth, in London. “I shall be very interested to see what you write for your Unit One”, he says. “I shall write about 12 words and…
READ MOREFive Years Ahead of My Time reviewed in Louder Than War
Added on 02/06/2019
“Wow!” That is the instant reaction one feels when delving into this compelling history of the style of rock known as ‘Garage’. The further you become engrossed, the more you begin to comprehend the scale of the task…
READ MORELeonardo da Vinci Rediscovered featured in the Guardian
Added on 02/06/2019
One of the world’s leading experts on Leonardo da Vinci has criticised Christie’s for wrongly suggesting in its cataloguing of the Salvator Mundi that she was among scholars who had attributed the picture to the Renaissance master.
READ MORE“A Robert Byron of the Left”? New Socialist interviews Owen Hatherley
Added on 31/05/2019
Owen Hatherley is the author of a remarkable number of excellent books on architecture, cities, and political aesthetics. His most recent, The Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space is published by Repeater Books.
READ MOREAnna Katharina Schaffner considers cultural histories of fat & fat phobia
Added on 29/05/2019
In recent decades, the British population has grown in girth. The NHS England obesity report for 2017 found that 58 per cent of women and 68 per cent of the men were overweight or obese, as well as one in five children aged three to four.
READ MOREWe’ll Never Have Paris reviewed in the TLS
Added on 29/05/2019
Each year about a dozen Japanese visitors to Paris are repatriated after suffering from “Paris syndrome”. That is what some polite tourists suffer when they discover that Parisians can be rude or the city does not meet their expectations.
READ MOREFully Automated Luxury Communism – a manifesto for the future
Added on 29/05/2019
“Under Fully Automated Luxury Communism,” writes Aaron Bastani in this short, dizzyingly confident book, luxury will pervade everything as society based on waged work becomes as much a relic as the feudal peasant …”
READ MOREAnd what of changing Siri Hustvedt’s mind?
Added on 25/05/2019
The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries Old Argument Over What Makes Living Things Tick by Jessica Riskin explores the history of ideas about agency and its connection to mechanistic thought, nature as machine.
READ MOREThe book that changed Emily Maitlis’ mind
Added on 25/05/2019
Back to Black by Kehinde Andrews has made me reassess my view of reparations for slavery. I used to think the idea of compensation seemed bizarre, undeliverable and risked reinforcing victimhood.
READ MOREVasily Grossman & the Soviet Century reviewed in the Evening Standard
Added on 24/05/2019
Vasily Grossman, the Ukrainian journalist and writer, made his name as a war correspondent for the Soviet army newspaper Red Star. His dispatches from the Russian front line between 1941 and 1945 radiate a fierce moral candour.
READ MOREThe creative ideas of a critical thinker: K-Punk reviewed in the TLS
Added on 21/05/2019
In January 2017 the celebrated theorist and cultural critic Mark Fisher took his own life. Despite publishing only two short volumes, he was regarded in certain circles as one of the leading voices on the left.
READ MOREThe secret lingo that fooled Mary Whitehouse!
Added on 16/05/2019
Language is not only a means of general communication, oiling the social wheels. With codes, ciphers and passwords, it can form a secret, private dialect, the keys to its meaning made available only to those in the know.
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