Review
1066 and all the clichés
The epic drama of the Norman Conquest has been adapted into a half-baked tale, light on history and heavy on tropes.
Helen Carr
September 17, 2025
Reviews
Significant works reviewed by Engelsberg Ideas writers.
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Review
Cavafy, poet of a vanished world
The Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy willed himself and his poetry upon the world’s imagination. A man of striking contradictions, he was a prophet of the perils and pr..
Margarita Mathiopoulos
September 12, 2025
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Review
The fall and rise of Central Europe
The cosmopolitan world of Central Europe was destroyed by the 20th-century tragedies of total war and Communism. Yet as an idea, it lived on, providing a powerful rallying point fo..
Morten Høi Jensen
September 9, 2025
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Review
The lost world of crafts
Traditional craft industries, now vanished or endangered, used to play a vital role in cementing communities. Why might they not do so again?
Michael Prodger
September 8, 2025
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Review
Inside Japan’s avant-garde
A creative tension between the trauma of war and the allure of Americanised, postwar life lay at the heart of the Japanese avant-garde. Its artists' compelling work continues to sh..
Christopher Harding
September 5, 2025
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Review
The invention of party politics
At the turn of the 18th century, English political life was suffused with sectarian strife. This is a story of partisanship with a peculiarly contemporary resonance.
Max Skjönsberg
September 4, 2025
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Review
When England began
Despite his strong claim to have been the first king of a united England, the enigmatic Æthelstan has long been neglected by historians. His remarkable achievements are finally bei..
Samuel Rubinstein
September 3, 2025
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Review
Catullus 64 unravelled
Gail Trimble's commentary on the text of Catullus’ Poem 64 is a triumph of painstaking yet imaginative scholarship, and an extraordinary mine of knowledge about Latin and Greek lit..
Armand D'Angour
September 2, 2025
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Review
A culinary quest through Paris
Chris Newens has captured the French capital in all its bewildering variety. The expat Englishman paints an optimistic portrait of a city of many different parts, rubbing along tog..
Henry Jeffreys
August 29, 2025