Reviews

Significant works reviewed by Engelsberg Ideas writers.

Still from the film 'Palestine 36' showing Palestinian horsemen. Credit: Curzon Film
Review

Palestine 36’s distorted history

The new historical epic, 'Palestine 36', offers a deeply flawed, disappointingly partial and waywardly remiss representation of British rule in the Holy Land.

Christopher Silvester November 19, 2025
Anna Ancher - Sunlight in the Blue Room - 1891 - T
Review

Anna Ancher’s language of light

In the northernmost corner of Denmark, the painter Anna Ancher made light her lifelong muse.

Alexandra Wilson November 17, 2025
The Amur tiger.
Review

Tigers between the Great Powers

The fate of the Amur tiger — feared, then hunted and finally protected — is linked to geopolitical change.

Caroline Eden November 13, 2025
Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Review

Wittgenstein’s great silence

The philosopher sought freedom from the bewitchment of language.

Bryan Appleyard November 12, 2025
John le Carré in The Pigeon Tunnel (2023).
Review

The craft of John le Carré

He was a writer who created his own world, filled with lamplighters and scalphunters, babysitters and pavement artists.

Malcolm Forbes November 11, 2025
The interior of a mosque in the Fes medina, Morocco.
Review

Modern Islam’s loss of theology

As 'Islam' rose from a personal act of submission to an ideology, it eclipsed the very divinity it sought to serve.

Fitzroy Morrissey November 10, 2025
Peeter Sion's 'St. Cecilia'.
Review

Musica universalis

The eye did not always have primacy over the ear. Humanity once valued spiritual hearing over spiritual seeing.

Derek Turner November 6, 2025
Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797), 'An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump', oil on canvas, 1768.
Review

Joseph Wright’s age of enlightenment

The English painter captured an emerging world of industry and innovation, discovery and dissemination, against the background of the Industrial Revolution.

Paul Lay November 5, 2025
British enlisted women learning Morse code in classroom. 1942. World War.
Review

Secret networks behind enemy lines

Britain's intelligence networks of the First and Second World War could not have operated without the vital contributions of female agents.

John Raine November 3, 2025

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