Reviews

Review

Francis Spufford’s incorrigibly plural world

Spufford's new novel conjures a wartime London at once enchanting and terrifying, alive with metamorphic possibility.

Mathew Lyons June 12, 2026

Review

The forgotten Scots who gave Kafka his voice

For half a century, Edwin and Willa Muir's translations were how the Anglophone world read Kafka. A prize-winning study of his translators barely registers their contribution.

Boyd Tonkin June 10, 2026

Review

The unsung artists of Spain’s Golden Age

Velázquez and El Greco loom over Spain's Golden Age, but an exhibition in Paris gives the era's overlooked artists their due.

Cath Pound June 9, 2026

Review

Winston Churchill’s world in paintings

Britain's wartime leader was also a gifted amateur painter, whose oeuvre, close in style to the English impressionists, offers a striking perspective on his extraordinary life.

Peter Caddick-Adams June 5, 2026

Review

The medieval art of self-correction

The Seven Deadly Sins fuelled a medieval appetite for self-improvement just as strong as our own.

Katherine Harvey June 4, 2026

Review

The elusive mind of Shakespeare

A study of England's greatest playwright questions received truths by taking an ahistorical approach. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

David Wootton June 2, 2026

Review

There was no ‘I’ in Emily Brontë

The art of biography has its limits, especially when it is aimed at a life lived through literature.

Charlotte Stroud May 29, 2026

Review

The First World War and the Habsburg state’s metamorphosis

Austria-Hungary's First World War was not the death rattle of a doomed empire. It was a period of state transformation which shaped the nations that replaced it.

Luka Ivan Jukic May 26, 2026

Review

The medieval guide to living well

Beyond the clichés of barbarity, the medieval world reveals a surprisingly sophisticated approach to health, where the pursuit of wellbeing was paramount.

Nicholas Morton May 20, 2026