News and reviews
Novel Houses by Christina Hardyment reviewed in the Guardian
Added on 01/11/2019
Where, or rather what, would Rebecca be without Manderley, The Forsyte Saga without Robin Hill or Howards End without, well, Howards End? In this collection of 20 sparkling mini-essays, Christina Hardyment sets out …
READ MORELegacy of Empire reviewed in the Tablet
Added on 01/11/2019
A few years ago, I was standing with an Israeli acquaintance on a viewing platform looking across Jerusalem. The panorama before us, he assured me, would tell me everything I needed to know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
READ MORENicosia Beyond Barriers reviewed in the Morning Star
Added on 29/10/2019
This anthology of work by writers across the dividing “green line” reflects the growing contestation of the divisive, right-wing nationalist “Turkish-Cypriot” official narratives and the emergence of unifying, inclusive, perspectives …
READ MORENow and Then featured in the Daily Mail
Added on 24/10/2019
An evocative series of portraits capturing Britain’s ‘ordinary folk’ in working class communities over a period of 25 years have been brought together in a stunning new collection. One of Britain’s foremost photographers, [Daniel] Meadows …
READ MOREThe Letters of Cole Porter featured in The Times
Added on 21/10/2019
A pair of British academics, who have compiled Porter’s correspondence into a forthcoming book entitled The Letters of Cole Porter, found that the musician’s private life was at odds with his public image as a wealthy man bouncing …
READ MOREMarie Antoinette reviewed in The Times
Added on 21/10/2019
Hardman utilises years of researching the fall of the French monarchy, weaving in accounts by those who knew, loved or loathed Marie Antoinette, to offer a broadly convincing portrait of a woman who “inspired loyalty in strangers …
READ MOREAhab’s Rolling Sea by Richard J. King reviewed in New Scientist
Added on 21/10/2019
[The author] studied Melville’s original sources to work out what he probably knew rather than what he wrote, delved into specimen tanks below the Natural History Museum in London, interviewed scientists and took to the seas …
READ MOREGrace Blakeley’s best books on how banking rules the world
Added on 21/10/2019
From a psychological study of city bankers to the ‘delusion of thrift’ in John Lanchester’s novel Capital, Grace Blakeley [the author of Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation] shares her favourite titles on the power of banks.
READ MORENatalie Olah takes a psychosocial look at the roots of Britain’s classist society
Added on 17/10/2019
I’ve got a radical idea that instead of focusing on the symptoms of poor mental health, as we so often do, we should begin to look at some of the causes, starting with the assumption that those in power got there entirely under their own …
READ MOREThe Elizabethan Image reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement
Added on 16/10/2019
In June 1968, Roy Strong – shortly after his sensational appointment, at the age of thirty-one, as Director of the National Portrait Gallery – reviewed a “Jackdaw” on Elizabeth I for the Spectator. Jackdaws were a series of …
READ MORELegacy of Empire reviewed in The Balfour Project
Added on 14/10/2019
“Nimbyism”, for readers unfamiliar with the term, crops up regularly in Gardner Thompson’s eloquent account of the disastrous course and consequences, still with us, of Britain’s 31 years ownership of and faltering rule in Palestine.
READ MOREPaul Baker’s Fabulosa! reviewed in .Cent Magazine
Added on 11/10/2019
Published in August 2019, fifty years after Stonewall, Paul Baker’s new book Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language reveals a significant part of this underground community: the language of Polari, primarily …
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