Reviews Archive

Review

Mystery in the Moon

Across the medieval world, the Moon induced feelings of fear and fascination.

Katherine Harvey August 28, 2025

a man and woman bow their heads in prayer in an agricultural scene painted by the painter millet

Review

Millet’s rural rides

A modest but moving exhibition of Jean-François Millet’s works illuminates the divisions, routines and solitude of French 19th-century rural life.

Alexandra Wilson August 13, 2025

People in goggles watching the first test in a series, Operation Greenhouse, that tested principles leading to developing thermonuclear weapons (hydrogen bombs)

Review

The day we learned how to end the world

The true dawn of the nuclear age did not come with the Trinity test in 1945, but seven years later, with the first detonation of a thermonuclear weapon.

Peter Hoskin August 12, 2025

Circassian troops make a temporary camp during the First World War.

Review

Food as a weapon of war

Conflict fundamentally alters social norms and cultural values, including how people eat.

Caroline Eden August 11, 2025

Review

The lives of the great – and good – composers

In an age when classical music has fallen out of the cultural mainstream, composers remain a source of endless fascination for playwrights.

Alexandra Wilson August 4, 2025

The slave market at Zabid in Yemen by Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti (1237 CE).

Review

Slavery in the shadow of the Qur’an

From the legal pronouncements of Ahmad Baba to the devşirme elite of the Ottoman Empire, Justin Marozzi’s sweeping history of slavery in the Islamic world reveals a tangled web of ..

Fitzroy Morrissey July 31, 2025

Review

Suleyman the Magnificent’s secret history

For all the scholarship contained in the second volume of his Ottoman trilogy, Christopher de Bellaigue’s modish style of writing leaves much to be desired.

Christopher Silvester July 29, 2025

oil painting of woman sat down on bed reading looking lonely

Review

The myth of the solitary genius

Guy Stagg set out to understand the redemptive power of retreat by exploring the solitary lives of Ludwig Wittgenstein, David Jones and Simone Weil. He does not like what he discov..

Katherine Harvey July 28, 2025

A sculpture at the Hill of Witches, Lithuania.

Review

The curious death of pagan Europe

In Lithuania – Europe’s last pagan kingdom – the death of the old religions was neither swift nor absolute. They lingered on, revealing a slower, stranger story of Christian conver..

Luka Ivan Jukic July 25, 2025