Reviews

Review

The art of photographic deception

Long before AI-generated images, photographers and entrepreneurs manipulated photographs, blending fiction and fact to often mesmerising effect.

Cath Pound April 17, 2026

Review

The making of modern science

Any history of the West's scientific revolution must explain how science generates new discoveries and ways of thinking about the natural world. Social-constructivist approaches ha..

David Wootton April 16, 2026

Review

How Communism conquered China

The Chinese Communist Party defeated its rivals because it was a formidably effective political organisation that captured the hearts and minds of China's elites.

Clark Aoqi Wu April 14, 2026

Review

The strange decline of London

A thrilling investigation into the demise of a young Londoner casts a spotlight on how Britain's once-great metropolis has been warped by corruption, hot money and speculative gree..

Bryan Appleyard April 13, 2026

Review

The plants that made the modern world

From tulip mania to opium, plants carried across oceans by empire have shaped wealth, power and everyday life for centuries.

Alexandra Wilson April 10, 2026

Review

The roving mind of Jan Morris

Morris was hungry for the world – all of it – and that made her interminably restless.

Bryan Appleyard April 8, 2026

Review

Writing the history of classical music

Robin Holloway’s monumental 'Music’s Odyssey' and Tom Service’s 'A History of the World in 50 Pieces' offer sharply contrasting visions of how the story of western classical music ..

Benjamin Poore April 1, 2026

Review

Arthur Miller and the memory of catastrophe

Arthur Miller’s 'Broken Glass' explores how memories of the Holocaust filter into Jewish American identity.

Malcolm Forbes March 31, 2026

Review

How the Soviet Union lived and died

The Soviet Union was a society defined by the constant tension between revolutionary promise and everyday hardship.

Caroline Eden March 30, 2026