New Books in British Studies
Episodes
Silke Muylaert, "Shaping the Stranger Churches: Migrants in England and the Troubles in the Netherlands, 1547–1585" (Brill, 2020)
08 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During the mid-sixteenth century, English reformers invited a group of continental Protestant refugees to London and surrounding provinces. The eccle...
Rachel Stuart on the Unmet Health Needs of London Sex Workers
08 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Doctors of the World, also known as Médecins du Monde, is an international network of more than 400 programmes across 80 different countries, providi...
A. Burton and R. Mawani, "Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times" (Duke UP, 2020)
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From yaks and vultures to whales and platypuses, animals have played central roles in the history of British imperial control. The contributors to An...
Hannah Jones, "Violent Ignorance: Confronting Racism and Migration Control" (Zed Books, 2021)
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An elected politician is assassinated in the street by a terrorist associated with extreme political groups, and the national response is to encourage...
Suzanne M. Hall, "The Migrant's Paradox: Street Livelihoods and Marginal Citizenship in Britain" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this richly observed account of migrant shopkeepers in five cities in the United Kingdom, Suzanne Hall examines the brutal contradictions of sovere...
Jeremy Black, "To Lose an Empire: British Strategy and Foreign Policy, 1758-90" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
02 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bringing strategy, foreign policy, domestic and imperial politics together, this book challenges the conventional understanding as to why the British ...
Jordan A. Stein, "When Novels Were Books" (Harvard UP, 2020)
02 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For most of the eighteenth century, the format, size, and price of the earliest novels meant that they would have been sold and bought alongside Prot...
Jurgen Martschukat, "The Age of Fitness: How the Body Came to Symbolize Success and Achievement" (Polity, 2021)
31 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today on New Books in History, Juergen Martschukat, professor of North American History at Universitat Erfurt, talks about his new book, The Age of ...
Kama Maclean, "A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text" (Oxford UP, 2015)
28 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Kama Maclean's book A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text (Oxford University Press, 2015) draws on new evidenc...
Benjamin Piekut, "Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem" (Duke UP, 2019)
28 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin Piekut's Henry Cow: The World is a Problem (Duke UP, 2019) provides a compelling case study of the problems and possibilities of collectiv...
Matthew Thompson, "Reconstructing Public Housing: Liverpool's Hidden History of Collective Alternatives" (Liverpool UP, 2020)
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How can we develop solutions to the housing crisis? In Reconstructing Public Housing: Liverpool's Hidden History of Collective Alternatives (Liverpo...
Tim Lockley, "Military Medicine and the Making of Race: Life and Death in the West India Regiments, 1795–1874" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
26 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Military Medicine and the Making of Race: Life and Death in the West India Regiments (Cambridge University Press, 2020) by Tim Lockley demonstrates ...
Linda Colley, "The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World" (Liveright, 2021)
26 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Linda Colley is a luminary in the fields of British and imperial history, and the Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University...
Jenny Bangham, "Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
26 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Blood is messy, dangerous, and charged with meaning. By following it as it circulates through people and institutions, Jenny Bangham explores the inti...
Michael P. Winship, "Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America" (Yale UP, 2019)
24 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The English Reformation started in the middle of the sixteenth century, and right away there were more zealous reformers who were not satisfied with t...
Patrick Spero, "Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776" (Norton, 2018)
21 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Boston, Philadelphia, London...Fort Loudon, PA. One of these places is not usually included when imagining the crucial scenes of the American Revoluti...
Christine Walker, "Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain's Atlantic Empire" (UNC Press, 2020)
21 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain's Atlantic Empire (Omohundro Institute/University of North Carolina Press, 2020) is t...
Jason H. Pearl, "Utopian Geographies and the Early English Novel" (U Virginia Press, 2014)
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Historians of the Enlightenment have studied the period’s substantial advances in world cartography, as well as the decline of utopia imagined in ge...
Joseph McQuade, "A Genealogy of Terrorism: Colonial Law and the Origins of an Idea" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
19 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Joseph McQuade about his book A Genealogy of Terrorism: Colonial Law and the Origins of an Idea (Cambridge University Press, 2020)...
Harry Freedman, "Reason to Believe: The Controversial Life of Rabbi Louis Jacobs" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
17 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Louis Jacobs was Britain's most gifted Jewish scholar. A Talmudic genius, outstanding teacher and accomplished author, cultured and easy-going, he was...
Richard Toye, "Winston Churchill: A Life in the News" (Oxford UP, 2020)
14 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Before Winston Churchill made history, he made news. To a great extent, the news made him too. If it was his own efforts that made him a hero, it was ...
T. Sanders et al., "Paying for Sex in a Digital Age: US and UK Perspectives" (Routledge, 2020)
10 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Providing one of the first comprehensive, cross-cultural examinations of the dynamic market for sexual services, this book presents an evidence-based ...
Carol Dyhouse, "Love Lives: From Cinderella to Frozen" (Oxford UP, 2021)
03 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cinderella stories captured the imagination of girls in the 1950s, when dreams of meeting the right man could seem like a happy ending, a solution to ...
Katie Cruz, "The Work of Sex Work: Prostitution, Unfreedom and Criminality at Work" (2020)
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Katie Cruz contributed a chapter titled "The Work of Sex Work: Prostitution, Unfreedom and Criminality at Work" to the book Criminality at Work. I...
John Ferris, "Behind the Enigma: The Authorized History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For more than a hundred years, Britain’s signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, has played a central role in the conduct of British statecraft. But the ...
Mytheli Sreenivas, "Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India" (U Washington Press, 2021)
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, India played a pivotal role in global conversations about population and reproduction. In Reproductive Poli...
Ritchie Robertson, "The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790" (Harper, 2021)
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 (Harper, 2021) is a magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely...
Richard Hammond, "Strangling the Axis: The Fight for Control of the Mediterranean during the Second World War" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Strangling the Axis: The Fight for Control of the Mediterranean during the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2020) , D...
Ali Raza, "Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this engaging and innovative history of the communist movement in colonial India, Ali Raza reveals the lives, geographies, and anti-colonial strugg...
Douglas M. O'Reagan, "Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science after the Second World War" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
23 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science After the Second World War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), Dou...
Jeremy Black, "England in the Age of Austen" (Indiana UP, 2021)
21 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Black's new book on England in the Age of Austen, just published by Indiana University Press (2021), will be a treat for anyone who loves Jane...
Jeremy Black, "A Brief History of Britain 1851-2021: From World Power to ?" (Robinson, 2021)
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Black, one of the most prolific and punchy of historians of modern Britain, has written a new account of a period on which he has previously pu...
Michael Wheeler, "The Athenaeum: More Than Just Another London Club" (Yale UP, 2020)
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When it was founded in 1824, the Athenæum broke the mold. Unlike in other preeminent clubs, its members were chosen on the basis of their achievement...
Stefano Marcuzzi, "Britain and Italy in the Era of the First World War: Defending and Forging Empires" (Cambridge UP, 2020).
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This is a reassessment of British and Italian grand strategies during the First World War. Dr. Stefano Marcuzzi, Max Weber Fellow at the European Uni...
John Garth, "The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Places That Inspired Middle-Earth" (Princeton UP, 2020)
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
John Garth's The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Places That Inspired Middle-Earth (Princeton University Press, 2020) takes you to the places that in...
Brad A. Jones, "Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic" (Cornell UP, 2021)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The American Revolution has traditionally been presented as one of the thirteen colonies standing up to a tyrannical empire. Not only does this gloss ...
Anand A. Yang, "Empire of Convicts: Indian Penal Labor in Colonial Southeast Asia" (U California Press, 2021)
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Empire of Convicts: Indian Penal Labor in Colonial Southeast Asia (University of California Press, 2021) (University of California Press, 2021) focus...
Sasha Roseneil, "The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm: Intimate Citizenship Regimes in a Changing Europe." (UCL Press, 2020)
07 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sasha Roseneil, Professor of Interdisciplinary Social Science at the Institute of Advanced Studies and Dean of the Faculty of Social and Historical St...
Michael B. Prince, "The Shortest Way with Defoe: Robinson Crusoe, Deism, and the Novel" (U Virginia Press, 2020)
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A scholarly and imaginative reconstruction of the voyage Daniel Defoe took from the pillory to literary immortality, The Shortest Way with Defoe: Rob...
Arunima Datta, "Fleeting Agencies: A Social History of Indian Coolie Women in British Malaya" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
05 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Fleeting Agencies: A Social History of Indian Coolie Women in British Malaya (Cambridge UP, 2021) disrupts the male-dominated narratives by focusing ...
Kama Maclean, "British India, White Australia: Overseas Indians, Intercolonial Relations and the Empire, 1901-1947" (NewSouth, 2020)
02 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Commonwealth, curry and cricket: now that explains India and Australia! Not really, and not according to today's guest. Kama Maclean discusses her b...
Caroline Ritter, "Imperial Encore: The Cultural Project of the Late British Empire" (UC Press, 2021)
02 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What role did culture play in the British Empire? In Imperial Encore: The Cultural Project of the Late British Empire Caroline Ritter, an Assistant ...
Roundtable on Medieval Conspiracy Theories
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Join us today for a roundtable conversation with three leading medieval scholars about the phenomenon of conspiracy theories in history. Michael T. ...
Agnes Arnold-Forster, "The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2021)
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Agnes Arnold-Forster's book The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2021) offers the first medical, cultural, and s...
Gershom Gorenberg, "War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East" (Public Affairs, 2021)
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942...
Zach Sell, "Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital" (UNC Press, 2021)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The middle decades of the 19th century witnessed the expansion of slavery and white settlement and dispossession of Indigenous lands west of the Missi...
Dan Hicks, "The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution" (Pluto Books, 2020)
26 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dan Hicks, Curator and Professor of Contemporary Archaeology, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University has written a terrific book. The Brutish Museums:...
Eilish Gregory, "Catholics During the English Revolution, 1642-1660: Politics, Sequestration and Loyalty" (Boydell Press, 2021)
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Eilish Gregory, Catholics During the English Revolution, 1642-1660: Politics, Sequestration and Loyalty (Boydell Press, 2021) is the first book to ...
Brendan McNamara, "The Reception of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Britain: East Comes West" (Brill, 2020)
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Brendan McNamara, who teaches religion at University College Cork, Ireland, has published an excellent new book on the expansion of the Bahá’í fai...
Michael Kluger and Richard Evans, "Roosevelt's and Churchill's Atlantic Charter: A Risky Meeting at Sea that Saved Democracy" (Naval Institute Press, 2021)
24 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Winston Churchill was no stranger to storms. They had engulfed him in various ways throughout his long career and he had always turned to face them wi...
Karen Stollznow, "On the Offensive: Prejudice in Language Past and Present" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
24 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Whether framed as complaints about cancel culture or as increased awareness of prejudice, stories about offensive language are common in our daily new...
Aaron G. Jakes, "Egypt's Occupation: Colonial Economism and the Crises of Capitalism" (Stanford UP, 2020)
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The story is a familiar one. In 1882, the British invaded Egypt to secure payment on the country’s crippling foreign debts and quash the movement fo...
Kamran Khan, "Becoming a Citizen: Linguistic Trials and Negotiations in the UK" (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2019)
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Citizenship is acquired and constructed through various mechanisms, including language tests, that require individuals to demonstrate a sufficient na...
Richard V. Barbuto, "New York's War of 1812: Politics, Society, and Combat" (U Oklahoma Press, 2021)
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From its use as a staging ground for invasions of Canada to the blockading of its ports, New York found itself at the forefront of America’s war wit...
Lorenzo Servitje, "Medicine Is War: The Martial Metaphor in Victorian Literature and Culture" (SUNY Press, 2021)
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Medicine is most often understood through the metaphor of war. We encounter phrases such as “the war against the coronavirus,” “the front lines ...
Bryce Traister, "American Literature and the New Puritan Studies" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bryce Traister has edited a collection of 13 original essays exploring the shifting landscape in the historiography of American Puritanism in America...
K. Forkert et al, "How Media and Conflicts Make Migrants" (Manchester UP, 2020)
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Has 'migrant' become an unshakeable identity for some people? How does this happen and what role does the media play in classifying individuals as 'mi...
Max Edling, "Perfecting the Union: National and State Authority in the US Constitution" (Oxford UP, 2020)
16 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On the face of things, the Constitution is concerned with individual and collective rights - to free speech, assembly, religion and that part about gu...
Roy Flechner, "Saint Patrick Retold: The Legend and History of Ireland's Patron Saint" (Princeton UP, 2019)
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The only surviving contemporary texts that provide insight into the life of Saint Patrick were both written by the legendary patron saint of Ireland. ...
Katie Hindmarch-Watson, "Serving a Wired World: London's Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capital" (U California Press, 2020)
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did telecommunications shape Victorian London? In Serving a Wired World London's Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capi...
Megan Eaton Robb, "Print and the Urdu Public: Muslims, Newspapers, and Urban Life in Colonial India" (Oxford UP, 2020)
12 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between print culture, religious identity, and formations of social consciousness in the modern period? In her brilliant new ...
Monica D. Fitzgerald, "Puritans Behaving Badly: Gender, Punishment, and Religion in Early America" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Puritans of Early America did not start out with gendered society and piety. Instead, Monica D. Fitzerald suggests, growing tensions between lay m...
J. L. Heilbron, "The Ghost of Galileo: In a Forgotten Painting from the English Civil War" (Oxford UP, 2021)
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
John Heilbron, professor of history and vice-chancellor emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley, is one of our most distinguished - and pro...
Brian Cummings et al., "Memory and the English Reformation" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The dramatic religious revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries involved a battle over social memory. On one side, the Reformation repud...
Michael Hattem, "Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution" (Yale UP, 2020)
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Hattem’s Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution (Yale, 2020) is a fascinating new look at how eighteenth-centur...
Laura Eastlake, "Ancient Rome and Victorian Masculinity" (Oxford UP, 2019)
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Eastlake’s Ancient Rome and Victorian Masculinity (Oxford University Press, 2019) examines Victorian receptions of ancient Rome from the Fr...
T. G. Otte, "Statesman of Europe: A Life of Sir Edward Grey" (Penguin, 2020)
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
'The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our life-time.' The words of Sir Edward Grey, looking out from the window...
Frances Galt, "Women’s Activism Behind the Screens: Trade Unions and Gender Inequality in the British Film and Television Industries" (Bristol UP, 2020)
05 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How can the history of women’s work in film and TV help address inequality today? In Women’s Activism Behind the Screens: Trade Unions and Gender...
Nira Wickramasinghe, "Slave in a Palanquin: Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka" (Columbia UP, 2020)
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For hundreds of years, the island of Sri Lanka was a crucial stopover for people and goods in the Indian Ocean. For the Dutch East India Company, it w...
Marion Turner, "Chaucer: A European Life" (Princeton UP, 2019)
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life—yet his poems are anything but conve...
Stephanie Russo, "The Afterlife of Anne Boleyn: Representations of Anne Boleyn in Fiction and on the Screen" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the centuries since her execution in 1536, Anne Boleyn’s presence in Western culture has grown to extraordinary proportions. In The Afterlife of...
Dean Blackburn, "Penguin Books and Political Change: Britain's Meritocratic Moment, 1937–1988" (Manchester UP, 2020)
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Founded in 1935 by a young publisher disillusioned with the class prejudices of the interwar publishing trade, Penguin Books set out to make good book...
Jeremy Black, "A New History of England" (History Press, 2020)
22 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
'Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.' Cecil Rhodes's characteristically nineteenth-cent...
Margarette Lincoln, "London and the Seventeenth Century" (Yale UP, 2021)
22 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Margarette Lincoln's London and the Seventeenth Century (Yale Yale University Press, 2021) explores the ups and downs of life in Stuart London th...
Jacob Steere-Williams, "The Filth Disease: Typhoid Fever and the Practices of Epidemiology in Victorian England" (U Rochester Press, 2020)
19 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Typhoid fever is a food- and water-borne infectious disease that was insidious and omnipresent in Victorian Britain. It was one of the most prolific d...
John G. Turner, "They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty" (Yale UP, 2020)
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
John G. Turner's excellent new history of the early American separatists, They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American ...
Stephen Wall, "Reluctant European: Britain and the European Union from 1945 to Brexit" (Oxford UP, 2020)
15 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2016, the voters of the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union. The majority for 'Leave' was small. Yet, in more than 40 years of EU me...
Duncan Bell, "Dreamworlds of Race: Empire and the Utopian Destiny of Anglo-America" (Princeton UP, 2020)
12 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Published in December 2020, Duncan Bell’s Dreamworlds of Race: Empire and the Utopian Destiny of Anglo-America (Princeton University Press, 2020)...
Jennifer M. Rampling, "The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1700" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A four-hundred-year history of the development of alchemy in England that brings to light the evolution of the practice. Tracing the development of al...
Kevin Weddle, "The Compleat Victory: Saratoga and the American Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2021)
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
British hopes that the American War for Independence would be brought to a swift conclusion began to wane in the early months of 1777. Despite brillia...
Anthony A. J. Williams, "Christian Socialism as Political Ideology: The Formation of the British Christian Left, 1877-1945" (I. B. Tauris, 2020)
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Anthony A. J. Williams is a political scientist who has taught at the University of Liverpool and at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Anthony i...
David Dickson, "Sermons on Jeremiah's Lamentations" (Reformation Heritage Books, 2020)
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew A. Vogan, who has published several books on the religious history and literature of seventeenth-century Scotland, and several editions of wor...
B. Kilpatrick and M. Patel, "Estate Regeneration: Learning from the Past, Housing Communities of the Future" (Routledge, 2020)
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One hundred years ago, the Addison Act created the circumstances for the large scale construction of municipal housing in the UK. This would lead to t...
Steven Press, "Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe's Scramble for Africa" (Harvard UP, 2017)
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Steven Press is an Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. His marvelous first book, Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe’s...
Barbara Black, "Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories" (Ohio State UP, 2019)
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During the nineteenth century, the grand hotel emerged as a vital part of London life. Originally catering to elite visitors needing a place to stay i...
Francis J. Bremer, "One Small Candle: The Plymouth Puritans and the Beginning of English New England" (Oxford UP, 2020)
01 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Bremer's outstanding new book, One Small Candle: The Plymouth Puritans and the Beginning of English New England (Oxford UP, 2020), describes t...
Sean McGever, "Born Again: The Evangelical Theology of Conversion in John Wesley and George Whitefield" (Lexham Press, 2020)
29 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
While the ministries of John Wesley and George Whitefield have been thoroughly examined by historians and theologians, too little attention has been ...
Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder, "Access All Areas: The Diversity Manifesto for TV and Beyond" (Faber and Faber, 2021)
29 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How can we create a more equal media industry? In Access All Areas: The Diversity Manifesto for TV and Beyond, Marcus Ryder and Sir Lenny Henry, b...
Michael Christo Low, "Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj" (Columbia UP, 2020)
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With the advent of the steamship, repeated outbreaks of cholera marked oceanic pilgrimages to Mecca as a dangerous form of travel and a vehicle for th...
Ed Caesar, "The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War, and Everest" (Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster, 2020)
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1933, Maurice Wilson — First World War hero, drifting veteran, and amateur aviator, lands in the aerodrome at Purnea in British India. His goal i...
Emma Griffin, "Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy" (Yale UP, 2020)
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Emma Griffin's Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy (Yale UP, 2020) offers a refreshingly different take on the age of nation...
Brian Deer, "The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield's War on Vaccines" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A reporter uncovers the secrets behind the scientific scam of the century. The news breaks first as a tale of fear and pity. Doctors at a London hos...
Nicholas McDowell, "Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton" (Princeton UP, 2020)
22 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Decades before he wrote his epic work Paradise Lost, John Milton was an active republican and polemicist. How Milton came to espouse such radical vie...
L. Ferlier and B. Miyamoto, "Forms, Formats and the Circulation of Knowledge: British Printscape’s Innovations, 1688-1832" (Brill, 2020)
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Forms, Formats and the Circulation of Knowledge: British Printscape’s Innovations, 1688-1832 (Brill, 2020) explores the printscape – the mental m...
Daniel Todman, "Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947" (Oxford UP, 2020)
18 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The second of Daniel Todman's two sweeping volumes on Great Britain and World War II, Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 (Oxford UP, 2020), begin...
Vernon Bogdanor, "Beyond Brexit: Towards a British Constitution" (I. B. Tauris, 2019)
06 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Brexit means exit, but what exactly will we be leaving behind? Entry into the European Community in 1973 was a momentous event – one which had seism...
Jen Manion, "Female Husbands: A Trans History" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
04 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Long before people identified as transgender or lesbian, there were female husbands and the women who loved them. Female husbands - people assigned fe...
Donald F. Johnson, "Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
28 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When we read the Declaration of Independence, what tends to jump off the page are the lofty propositions concerning natural rights. Yet over a third o...
Ronald Hutton, "The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft" (Oxford UP, 2019)
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we speak to Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at the University of Bristol, in the United Kingdom about the twentieth anniversary, and concom...
Tom Boniface-Webb, "Modern Music Masters: Oasis" (MMM, 2020)
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the first book in the Modern Music Masters series, Tom Boniface-Webb examines the Manchester band Modern Music Masters-Oasis (MMM, 2020). Founde...