Reviews

Review

Shaping society — The Making of Our Urban Landscape by Geoffrey Tyack review

Geoffrey Tyack offers a compelling exploration of two millennia of British architecture and the history reflected in the built environment.

Matthew Lloyd Roberts May 13, 2022

Review

Great Books: Albert Camus’ Le premier homme

Albert Camus' final work on his childhood and adolescence is the key to fully understanding his philosophy and politics.

Eve Webster May 6, 2022

Review

Policy shaped by personal conviction — False Prophets: British leaders’ fateful fascination with the Middle East from Suez to Syria by Nigel Ashton review

Successive prime ministers behaved as if Britain had an outsized role to play in the troubled region despite economic pressures at home and public opposition.

Peter Ricketts April 29, 2022

Review

Doing our duty at home and abroad — A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid by Peter Hennessy review

Britain’s pre-eminent political historian and constitutional analyst chronicles the pandemic and lists the ingredients for a ‘new Beveridge’; but there are international parallels,..

Gill Bennett April 22, 2022

Review

The honourable men of the House of Morgan – J.P Morgan & Co and the Crisis of Capitalism by Martin Horn review

The tumultuous interwar period posed enormous challenges to the world's largest bank. In his latest work, Martin Horn charts how J.P Morgan & Co. survived the Wall Street Crash, fe..

Samuel Gregg April 14, 2022

Review

Great Books: Charles Dickens’ Hard Times

Charles Dickens’ only dystopia has been rather unheralded, but it is a tale for our fossil-fuel powered age.

Helen Thompson April 14, 2022

Review

The inner lives of others — The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War by Philip Oltermann review

How soul-seeking secret agents looked to sonnets for ideological salvation in the literary circles of the German Democratic Republic.

Katja Hoyer April 8, 2022

Review

Nepal’s shifting loyalties — All Roads Lead North: China, Nepal and the Conquest for the Himalayas by Amish Raj Mulmi review

As the old adage goes, Nepal is a yam between two boulders. However, slowly but surely Nepal is unsticking itself from its southern neighbour and turning north towards China.

Eve Webster April 1, 2022

Review

Great Books: E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops

Although previously dismissed as fanciful and tedious, the world of E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops in fact bears an unsettling resemblance to our own.

Alastair Benn March 25, 2022