Reviews Archive

A confessional box in a Catholic cathedral.

Review

The allure of Catholic conversion

From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, many British writers, artists and thinkers were drawn to the Catholic Church in the 20th century.

Guy Stagg January 29, 2026

Review

The power of night-thinking

Night-thinking reveals what our age of reason and certainty often overlooks: the power of the holistic, the intuitive, and the fragmentary.

Mateusz Strozynski January 26, 2026

James Nasmyth's steam hammer in his foundry near Manchester.

Review

Britain’s ruthless rise

Early-modern Britain’s capitalists, industrialists, and entrepreneurs combined ambition, ingenuity, and moral compromise to transform the economic world.

Samuel Rubinstein January 19, 2026

Portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort from the Hall in St John's College, Cambridge. Credit: The Picture Art Collection

Review

The woman who made the Tudors

Margaret Beaufort, grandmother of Henry VIII, used her iron resolve to lay the foundations of Tudor England.

Katherine Harvey January 15, 2026

Review

Thomas Mann’s art of contradiction

Morten Høi Jensen’s 'The Master of Contradictions' explores the tensions at the heart of Thomas Mann’s world and shows how, in 'The Magic Mountain', he heroically struggles to reso..

Charlotte Stroud January 14, 2026

The Angels Hovering Over the Body of Christ in the Sepulchre by William Blake, c. 1805.

Review

Seeing angels with William Blake

It is tempting to write Blake’s visions off as mere flights of fancy, the vivid but insubstantial by-products of a peculiarly mystical imagination. But for Blake, they were the key..

Alexander Lee January 6, 2026