Reviews Archive

Gabriel Byrne and Maxine Peake in a scene from Dance First.

Review

Dance first, think afterwards

A conventional film about the life of Samuel Beckett fails to explore the unconventional writer's work in film and television that made him so interesting.

Alexander Larman November 7, 2023

Review

John Craxton’s art of living

The artist John Craxton's vigorous pursuit of pleasure, his hedonistic philosophy, led him to the shores of Greece and beyond.

Zachary Hardman November 7, 2023

Review

Did slavery cause the British Industrial Revolution?

While the case that slavery was critical to the Industrial Revolution is solid when it comes to capital and markets, it is not easy to establish with technology. And the Industrial..

Tirthankar Roy November 3, 2023

Postcard advertising the Canadian Pacific Railway circa 1910.

Review

Canada’s Pacific railway: an iron spine for a paper nation

Built to protect British North America from an economically ravenous United States, the Canadian Pacific Railway proved to be a quixotic project.

Michael Ledger-Lomas November 2, 2023

The house of W. H. Auden at Kirchstetten.

Review

Auden’s Austrian summer

A frustrating study suggests that the relationship between a British-born Viennese Aristocrat and W.H. Auden was crucial to the poet’s late-flowering.

Oliver Soden November 1, 2023

CCP Poster from the Cultural Revolution stating 'Proletarian revolutionaries unite under the great red banner of the thoughts of Mao Tse-tung'

Review

A Chinese history to start a fire

Underground historians have provided a beacon of hope for resistance in Communist China. Ian Johnson's new book chronicles their struggles to produce and disseminate their scholars..

Michael Sheridan October 26, 2023

Review

After the Flood: Boulanger’s creation myth restored

An Enlightenment work of extraordinary intellectual ambition receives, at last, a ‘serviceable’ edition.

David Wootton October 23, 2023

The London Sinfonietta celebrates the life of provocatively distinctive composer György Ligeti.

Review

Celebrating Ligeti’s soundspace odyssey

The music of György Ligeti, the great Hungarian composer, still sounds like that of the future.

Benjamin Poore October 23, 2023

A map of Europe from the Catalan Atlas, 1375

Review

Rethinking the medieval Mediterranean

In his new book, Chris Wickham studies the short and long-distance commerce that made Medieval Mediterranean society in a work that is ambitious, punchy and even occasionally amusi..

Nicholas Morton October 12, 2023