Reviews Archive

William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada (1942). Credit: Chronicle

Review

Who really was Mackenzie King, the maker of modern Canada?

A new collection of essays revisits the life of a séance-holding Presbyterian bachelor whom historians routinely rank as Canada's greatest prime minister, yet one largely ignored b..

Yuan Yi Zhu June 15, 2026

Review

Slavery was the air the Romans breathed

With no first-person narratives surviving, Emma Southon draws skilfully on epigraphy to recover the lives of enslaved Romans. But her thin treatment of Roman comedy leaves a valuab..

Orlando Gibbs June 15, 2026

St Paul's Cathedral and the London skyline as it appeared during a German air raid of the Second World War on December 29th, 1940. Credit: De Luan

Review

Francis Spufford’s incorrigibly plural world

Spufford's new novel conjures a wartime London at once enchanting and terrifying, alive with metamorphic possibility.

Mathew Lyons June 12, 2026

The Penguin Modern Classics edition of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Review

The forgotten Scots who gave Kafka his voice

For half a century, Edwin and Willa Muir's translations were how the Anglophone world read Kafka. A prize-winning study of his translators barely registers their contribution.

Boyd Tonkin June 10, 2026

Virgin of the Immaculate Conception by Fray Alonso López de Herrera (1640).

Review

The unsung artists of Spain’s Golden Age

Velázquez and El Greco loom over Spain's Golden Age, but an exhibition in Paris gives the era's overlooked artists their due.

Cath Pound June 9, 2026

Sir Winston Churchill, 'Tower of the Katoubia Mosque', painted in 1943.

Review

Winston Churchill’s world in paintings

Britain's wartime leader was also a gifted amateur painter, whose oeuvre, close in style to the English impressionists, offers a striking perspective on his extraordinary life.

Peter Caddick-Adams June 5, 2026