Reviews

Significant works reviewed by Engelsberg Ideas writers.

A women's literary salon.
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
Northern Lights Cathedral
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
The Ten Largest, 1907 at Hilma AF Klint & Piet Mondrian : Forms of Life, Tate Modern. Credit: michael melia / Alamy Stock Photo
Review

The World Was Not Ready for Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint's rightful place is at the heart of the art historical canon.

David Lomas May 4, 2023
Ryan Speedo Green as Young Emile Griffith in Terence Blanchard's Champion.
Review

Championing Opera’s Next Generation

The Met's ‘edgy’ new season is anything but. It needs to look elsewhere if it is to revive this most dramatic of musical genres.

Gerald Malone April 25, 2023
Supporters of Capt. Ibrahim Traore wave a Russian flag in the streets of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 2022.
Review

Russia’s Scramble for Africa

Intensified activity across the African continent is part of Russia's quest to construct a multipolar world.

Andrew Monaghan April 21, 2023
View of Baltimore from Federal Hill, 1831.
Review

On the Road with Alexis de Tocqueville

Without Tocqueville the traveller, Tocqueville the sage of democracy is difficult to conceive of at all.

Samuel Gregg April 13, 2023
A projection of the original manuscript of the poem 'Toads' by Philip Larkin.
Review

Larkin, prophet of postmodernism

The Oxford Anthology of Twentieth Century English Verse, published fifty years ago this year, is the best expression we have of what Larkin thought poetry could and should be.

Jeremy Wikeley April 13, 2023
A Roman Feast, Roberto Bompiani.
Review

A Roman Feast

A knotty and complex portrait of life under the early Roman emperors, written with delightful abandon.

Daisy Dunn April 7, 2023

Download The Engelsberg
Ideas app

The world in your pocket. The app brings together – in one place – our essays, reviews, notebooks, and podcasts.

Download here