Reviews Archive

Photograph of a wall encircling the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland.

Review

John Hersey’s lasting testament

One of the first and most consequential pieces of literature on the Holocaust, John Hersey’s The Wall combines exhaustive research with empathetic storytelling to capture both the ..

Angus Reilly June 7, 2023

Review

People of the desert

An old-fashioned narrative informed by the latest discoveries could only be the work of a master historian of the grand scale.

Anthony Sattin June 6, 2023

A Taliban fighter stands guard as women wait to receive food rations distributed by a humanitarian aid group in Kabul, Afghanistan, May, 2023.

Review

Everything is not really okay in Afghanistan

Hassan Abbas’ portrayal of the Taliban’s first year in power tracks the difficult transition from insurgent group to cabinet government, and argues for engagement for the sake of t..

Suzanne Raine June 2, 2023

Review

Highs and lows

A trio of new productions of operatic masterpieces suggests that less is more.

Paul Lay June 1, 2023

Review

In defence of the literary critic

Literary criticism is casting off its stultifying, exclusionary shackles. Its redefinition as something more personal meets the reader on equal terms in a quietly defiant act.

Charlotte Stroud May 25, 2023

Portrait of an East India Company Official

Review

The British Empire: a Very English Perspective

An explicitly ‘progressive’ survey of nascent British imperialism buckles under the weight of its contradictions.

Samuel Rubinstein May 15, 2023

Review

Religion v Science: Crossing the Great Divide

This grand historical survey, running from the classical world to the quantum age, is an impressively erudite and admirably even-handed account of the entanglements of religion and..

Christopher Harding May 11, 2023