June 7, 2021 Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack by Richard Ovenden Review by Liz Dexter The processes of selection, acquisition and cataloguing, as well as of disposal and retention, are never neutral acts. They are…
May 28, 2021 Double Lives by Helen McCarthy Reviewed by Harriet In this impressively detailed book, shortlisted for this year’s Wolfson History Prize, Helen McCarthy surveys the lives of women who worked…
May 11, 2021 Digging up Britain: A New History in Ten Extraordinary Discoveries by Mike Pitts Reviewed by Liz Dexter “Who are we? Where do we come from? What is Britain, and what does it mean to be British?” This…
April 29, 2021 Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera Reviewed by Liz Dexter “If we don’t confront the reality of what happened in British empire, we will never be able to work out…
April 27, 2021 Whitman in Washington by Kenneth Price Reviewed by Rob Spence Kenneth Price is the co-director of the Walt Whitman Archive, and one of the leading experts on the poet, having…
April 20, 2021 Commemorative Modernisms by Alice Kelly Review by Rob Spence Modernism has always resisted precise definition, and in recent years it has been normal in literary-critical circles to use the…
April 15, 2021 Love Lives by Carol Dyhouse Reviewed by Harriet It’s probably a common experience among people who read a lot that sometimes two books will overlap in unexpected ways. This…
March 4, 2021 The Panic Years by Nell Frizzell Reviewed by Harriet ‘Every millennial woman should have this on her bookshelf’ says Pandora Sykes on the front of Nell Frizzell’s new book. New…
February 25, 2021 Thin Places by Kerri ní Dochartaigh Review by Peter Reason I have been totally absorbed in Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Thin Places since it arrived in the morning mail and I…
February 23, 2021 Chauvo-Feminism: On Sex, Power and #MeToo by Sam Mills Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Remember the 1990s? It was a decade where lads’ mags decorated magazine shelves in supermarkets and where Men Are from…
February 2, 2021 Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights, edited by Polly Russell and Margaretta Jolly Reviewed by Liz Dexter It used to be that we attended exhibitions and treated ourselves to the catalogue in the shop on the way…
December 8, 2020 The Haunting of Amelia Fielding, by Kate Summerscale Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies Believe it or not, the occult is always a source of fascination. For the persuaded, it offers an expanded view…
November 26, 2020 Work: A History of How We Spend our Time by James Suzman Reviewed by Liz Dexter I will say right away that this is probably not the book you think it will be. The subtitle suggests…
November 10, 2020 The Spirit of the Blitz – edited by Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I thought I’d learnt to check how long a book is before I agreed or offered to review it, but…
October 15, 2020 Kitted Out: Style and Youth Culture in the Second World War by Caroline Young Reviewed by Liz Dexter This extremely well-researched and authoritative book takes us through the Second World War, in the UK, the US, the Far…
September 8, 2020 The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes Reviewed by Liz Dexter A book that is in turns entertaining, lyrical and shocking, you won’t think about the countryside – or the rivers…
September 3, 2020 King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes Translated by Frank Wynne Reviewed by Annabel I write from the realms of the ugly, for the ugly, the old, the bull dykes, the…
July 28, 2020 Notes From An Apocalypse by Mark O’Connell Review by Annabel O’Connell is an Irish journalist who won the Wellcome Book Prize for his previous title, To Be a Machine (which I…
June 18, 2020 Sensuous Knowledge: A black feminist approach for everyone by Minna Salami Review by Peter Reason Minna Salami is a Nigerian and Finnish social critic, founder of the MsAfropolitan blog, who draws on Africa-centric and feminist…
June 9, 2020 The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans by David Abulafia Review by Liz Dexter The reason this book is in the news now is that it has been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize…
April 30, 2020 Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights by Helen Lewis Review by Liz Dexter First of all a caveat, in case any keen-eyed reader finds my name in the acknowledgements: I did work on…
April 7, 2020 She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen: British Women in India by Katie Hickman Reviewed by Harriet What an enticing title! Made even more so by the sub-title, ‘British Women in India’. Katie Hickman, who herself led a…
February 27, 2020 Square Haunting by Francesca Wade Review by Karen Langley “Square Haunting” was published to much fanfare and acclaim recently; a book which looks at the lives of five notable…
February 5, 2020 Learning Languages in Early Modern England by John Gallagher Review by Liz Dexter Has it ever struck you that before England obtained its empire, no one else in the world bothered to speak…
December 5, 2019 Tales of the Troubled Dead: Ghost Stories in Cultural History – Catherine Belsey Review by Hayley Anderton Tales of the weird have a deep hold on our collective imagination, and of all the things we’ve given credence…
