New Books in British Studies

Katie Beswick, "Slags on Stage: Class, Sex, Art and Desire in British Culture" (Routledge, 2025)

01 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How are working class women represented in contemporary culture? In Slags on Stage: Class, Sex, Art and Desire in British Culture (Routledge, 2025),...

The Telegraph Takeover: Power, Profit & the Press

31 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the season finale of Ctrl Alt Deceit, Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones dig into the tangled web of media ownership, foreign influence and the...

Catriona M.M. MacDonald, "The Caledoniad: The Making of Scottish History" (John Donald, 2024)

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why did Scots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries know so little about their past and even less about those who controlled their history? Is the...

Hannah Jeans, "Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England" (U London Press, 2025)

25 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England (University of London Press, 2025), Hannah Jeans explores the reading habits of earl...

Richard D. Oram, "A Land Won from Waste: Scotland AD 400-1400" (Birlinn, 2025)

24 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland e...

Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1845, European potato fields from Spain to Scandinavia were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland, then part of the United Kingd...

Dan Sperrin, "State of Ridicule: A History of Satire in English Literature" (Princeton UP, 2025)

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Satire is a funny, aggressive, and largely oppositional literature which is typically created by people who refuse to participate in a given regime’...

Quentin Skinner, "Liberty as Independence: The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does liberty entail? How have concepts of liberty changed over time? And what are the global consequences? Liberty as Independence: The Making a...

Steve McCauley on Barbara Pym: The Comic Novel Explored and Adored (JP)

20 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Back in 2019, John spoke with the celebrated comic novelist Stephen McCauley. Nobody knows more about the comic novel than Steve--his latest is You ...

The Price of Free Speech: Politics and Power on Campus

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hosts Nina Dos Santos and Owen Bennett Jones explore the mounting political and financial pressures confronting higher education on both sides of the ...

Matthew Restall, "On Elton John: An Opinionated Guide" (Oxford UP, 2025)

18 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Elton John is not only "still standing," he is a living superlative, the ultimate record-breaking, award-winning survivor of the great era of pop and ...

Aviva Briefel, "Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism" (Cornell UP, 2025)

17 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Aviva Briefel argues that Victoria...

Stuart Ward, "Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How did Britain cease to be global? In Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Professor Stuart War...

Ben Jackson, "Material Masculinities: Men and Goods in Eighteenth-Century England" (Manchester UP, 2025)

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Material Masculinities: Men and Goods in Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Ben Jackson examines the material and ...

Claire McNulty, "Edinburgh's Unruly Women: Gender, Discipline, and Power, 1560-1660" (Routledge, 2024)

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Edinburgh's Unruly Women: Gender, Discipline, and Power, 1560-1660 (Routledge, 2024) examines experiences of church discipline across parish communit...

Beaty Rubens, "Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home" (Bodleian Library, 2025)

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Radio, today, can feel like a faithful old companion, but its early history was sensational. Between 1922 and 1939, British life was transformed by wh...

Make Britain Great Again? The MAGA-Style Rise of Reform UK

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Britain's Conservative Party is one of the oldest and most successful political parties in history. Local elections in the UK have signalled that they...

Andrea Pappas, "Embroidering the Landscape: Women, Art and the Environment in British North America, 1740-1770" (Lund Humphries, 2023)

04 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Linking histories of women, relationships to the natural environment, material culture and art, in Embroidering the Landscape: Women, Art and the Env...

Jeremy Black, "British Politics and Foreign Policy, 1727-44" (Routledge, 2014)

03 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Covering the period from the end of the Anglo-French alliance in 1731 to the declaration of war between the two powers in 1744, British Politics and ...

Jeremy Black, "Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of George I, 1714-1727" (Routledge, 2016)

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Through its focus on the relationship between foreign and domestic politics, Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of George I, 1714-1727 (Routledg...

Matthew Daniel Eddy, "Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We often think of reason as a fixed entity, as a definitive body of facts that do not change over time. But during the Enlightenment, reason also was ...

Jack Copley, "Governing Financialization: The Tangled Politics of Financial Liberalization in Britain" (Oxford UP, 2022)

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most distinctive aspects of global capitalism in the last half century or so has been the increased role of the financial sector in the glo...

Martin Thomas, "The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization" (Princeton UP, 2024)

29 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of em...

Nat Dyer, "Ricardo’s Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray" (Bristol UP, 2024)

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the workings of financial markets to our response to the ecological crisis, economic theory shapes the world. But where do these ideas come from?...

Tim Grady, "Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars" (Yale UP, 2025)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars (Yale University Press, 2025), Tim Grady recounts here a detaile...

Asa Simon Mittman, "Cartographies of Exclusion: Anti-Semitic Mapping in Medieval England" (Penn State UP, 2024)

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the battles over Jerusalem to the emergence of the “Holy Land,” from legally mandated ghettos to the Edict of Expulsion, geography has long b...

Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023)

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to the Global Corporations Special Series on the Law Channel on the New Books Network. This Special Series is dedicated to interviews with s...

Reider Payne, "War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Though Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh remains well known today for his role in shaping the post-Napoleonic peace settlement in Europe, his half-...

Paul M. McGarr, "Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India's Secret Cold War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

20 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India's Secret Cold War (Cambridge UP, 2024) is the first comprehensive history of India's sec...

Mary Bosworth, "Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control" (Princeton UP, 2024)

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the UK’s fully outsourced “immigration detainee escorting system,” private sector security employees detain, circulate and deport foreign nat...

Gabe Henry, "Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell" (Dey Street, 2025)

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Eezier to Spell (Dey Street Books, 2025), Gabe Henry presents a  brief and humorous 500-...

Titas Chakraborty, "Empire of Labor: How the East India Company Colonized Hired Work" (U California Press, 2025)

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.f...

Forest Issac Jones, "Good Trouble: The Selma, Alabama and Derry, Northern Ireland Connection 1963-1972" (First Hill Books, 2025)

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Forest Isaac Jones is an award-winning author of non-fiction and essays, specializing in the study of Irish History, the US Civil Rights Movement and ...

Margaret Urwin, "A State in Denial: British Collaboration with Loyalist Paramilitaries" (Mercier Press, 2016)

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A State in Denial: British Collaboration with Loyalist Paramilitaries (Mercier Press, 2016) uses previously secret official documents to explore the...

Sam Wetherell, "Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does the history of Liverpool tell us about the future of Britain? In Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain (Bloomsbury, 2025), Sam Wetherall,...

Seán Creagh, "Republican Solipsist: The Life and Times of Joseph Mcgarrity, 1874-1940" (Peter Lang, 2025)

05 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Seán Creagh was born in County Monaghan in 1977. He attended Our Lady’s Secondary School in Castleblayney and later on Dundalk Institute of Techno...

Patrick Wallis, "The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship and Economic Growth in Early Modern England" (Princeton UP, 2025)

05 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal exper...

Philip Harling, "Managing Mobility: The British Imperial State and Global Migration, 1840-1860" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1840 and 1860 the British Empire expanded rapidly in scale, with rampant annexation of territory and ruthless suppression of rebellion. These ...

Liz William, "Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain" (Reaktion, 2025)

29 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain (Reaktion, 2025) by Liz Williams explores transgression and shame in British folklor...

David Burke, "Kitson's Irish War: Mastermind of the Dirty War in Ireland" (Mercier Press, 2021)

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The British government has taken steps to halt the prosecution of soldiers responsible for the deaths of civilians in Northern Ireland, most of whom h...

Kiran Mehta, "To Detain or to Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750–1840" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Imprisonment was rarely used as punishment in Britain before 1800. The criminal justice system was based on terror and deterrence, sentencing convicts...

Jeremy Black, "A History of Britain's Transport" (Pen and Sword, 2025)

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An accessible book to draw on popular interest in transport history, routes, vehicles and experiences. Transport history is social and industrial nati...

Andrew Long, "BRIXMIS and the Secret Cold War: Intelligence Collecting Operations Behind Enemy Lines in East Germany" (Pen and Sword, 2024)

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, was the frontline in the Cold War, packed with hundreds of thousands of Soviet and East German troops...

Joshua Ehrlich, "The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to the Global Corporations Special Series on the Law Channel on the New Books Network. This Special Series is dedicated to interviews with s...

Cars, Race and Class with Yunis Alam

23 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of Radio ReOrient, Claudia Radiven and Saeed Khan spoke to Dr Yunis Alam about cars, class and race. They discussed the role that cars...

Ben Bowles, "Boaters of London: Alternative Living on the Water" (Berghahn Books, 2024)

22 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Boaters of London is an ethnography that delves into the process of becoming a boater, adopting an alternative lifestyle on the water and the politic...

Ashis Ray, "The Trial That Shook Britain: How a Court Martial Hastened Acceptance of Indian Independence" (Routledge India, 2024)

21 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1945 to 1946, postwar India was enthralled by the treason trial of three officers—formerly of the Indian National Army, who fought against the Br...

Jon Chapple, "Sri Krishna Prem: A Wing and a Prayer" (Blazing Sapphire Press, 2024)

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sri Krishna Prem: A Wing and a Prayer is an in-depth, spiritual biography of a British fighter pilot (WW I), Ronald Nixon (1898-1965). Raised in an i...

Matt Lodder, "Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art" (Yale UP, 2024)

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There is a pervasive stereotype of tattoo culture as relating to an underworld of scoundrels, sailors, and ne’er-do-wells, yet it has existed in the...

Clive Bloom, "London Uncanny: A Gothic Guide to the Capital in Weird History and Fiction" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From Kensington to the East End, under candlelight, gas lamp and then neon signs, London is both a bustling physical metropolis and a stirring psychic...

Sally Coulthard, "A Brief History of the Countryside in 100 Objects" (HarperCollins UK, 2024)

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For most of human history, we were rural folk. Our daily lives were bound up with working the land, living within the rhythm of the seasons. We poured...

Nima Bassiri, "Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

15 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Uncovers a powerful relationship between pathology and money: beginning in the nineteenth century, the severity of mental illness was measured against...

Martha Bayless, "Entertainment, Pleasure, and Meaning in Early England" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The people of early England (c. 450–1100 CE) enjoyed numerous kinds of entertainment, recreation and pleasure, but the scattered records of such thi...

Harriet Atkinson, "Showing Resistance: Propaganda and Modernist Exhibitions in Britain, 1933-53" (Manchester UP, 2024)

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How did exhibitions become a vital tool for public communication in early twentieth century Britain? Showing resistance reveals how exhibitions were t...

Martin Spychal, "Mapping the State: English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act" (U London Press, 2024)

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 1832 Reform Act was a landmark moment in the development of modern British politics. By overhauling the country’s ancient representative system,...

Gregory Soderberg, "John Brown of Haddington on Frequent Communion" (Wipf & Stock, 2024)

11 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shallow and quickly outdated Christian worship practices have left many searching for something with deeper roots. Many churches have rediscovered the...

Madalina Armie and Veronica Membrive, "Trauma, Memory and Silence of the Irish Woman in Contemporary Literature" (Routledge, 2023)

09 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trauma, Memory and Silence of the Irish Woman in Contemporary Literature (Routledge, 2023) studies the manifestations of female trauma through the ex...

Abby Innes, "Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

09 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why has the United Kingdom, historically one of the strongest democracies in the world, become so unstable? What changed? Late Soviet Britain: Why Ma...

Janam Mukherjee, "Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2015)

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The years leading up to the independence and accompanying partition of India mark a tumultuous period in the history of Bengal. Representing both a ma...

Simona Valeriani, "The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences" (Brepols, 2024)

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London’s most iconic buildings and decon...

Deborah Reed-Donahay, "Sideways Migration: Being French in London" (Routledge, 2025)

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sideways Migration: Being French in London (Routledge, 2025) examines the relationship between migration and socioeconomic status. In particular, it ...

Waiyee Loh, "Empire of Culture: Neo-Victorian Narratives in the Global Creative Economy" (SUNY Press, 2024)

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Empire of Culture: Neo-Victorian Narratives in the Global Creative Economy (SUNY Press, 2024) by Dr. Waiyee Loh brings together contemporary represen...

Caroline Dunn, "Ladies-in-waiting in Medieval England" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

02 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Caroline Dunn joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Ladies-in-Waiting in Medieval England (Cambridge UP, 2025), which examines female attend...

Ellen Fenzel Arnold, "Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, C. 300-1100" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

01 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jana Byars talks to Ellen Arnold about Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, 300 - 1100 (Cambridge UP, 2024). Fishermen...

Matthew Hughes, "Britain's Pacification of Palestine" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

28 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this complete military history of Britain's pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine, Britain's Pacification of Palestine (Cambridge UP, 2019...

David R. Saunders, "Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965" (Cornell UP, 2024)

25 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965 (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr...

Jenny Shaw, "The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery" (UNC Press, 2024)

23 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery (UNC Press, 2024) is a dramatic transatlantic story about five women who birthe...

Peter Ramey, "The Word-Hoard Beowulf: A Translation with Commentary" (Angelico Press, 2023)

22 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Beowulf is the product of a profoundly religious imagination, but the significance of the poem’s Christianity has been downplayed or denied altoget...

Mary Flannery, "Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

22 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For over six centuries, Chaucer has epitomized poetic greatness, though more recent treatments of The Canterbury Tales’ lively and often risqué s...

Martyn Percy, "The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England" (Hurst, 2025)

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England (Hurst, 2025) by Dr. Martyn Percy offers a bold and unsettlin...

Lindsay O'Neill, "The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early Eighteenth-Century Journey Into and Out of Slavery" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1716 two princes from Mpfumo—what is today Maputo, the capital of Mozambique—boarded a ship licensed by the East India Company bound for Englan...

Asheesh Kapur Siddique, "The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World" (Yale UP, 2024)

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two ocea...

Ruby Lowe on John Milton’s Definition of Free Speech

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

British poet John Milton published one of the earliest and still tremendously important defenses of free speech for our modern world. From his famous ...

Raphael Chijioke Njoku, "Queen Elizabeth II and the Africans: Narrating Decolonization, Postwar Commonwealth, and Africa’s Development, 1947-2022" (Leuven UP, 2024)

16 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The road to Queen Elizabeth II’s implementation of African reforms was rough, especially in the first two decades following her ascension to the thr...

Marcel Elias, "English Literature and the Crusades: Anxieties of Holy War, 1291-1453" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

16 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The period from the Mamlūk reconquest of Acre (1291) to the Ottoman siege of Constantinople (1453) witnessed the production of a substantial corpus o...

Jacqueline M. Burek, "Literary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain's Long Twelfth Century" (York Medieval Press, 2023)

16 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Histories of Britain composed during the "twelfth-century renaissance" display a remarkable amount of literary variety (Latin varietas). Furthermore,...

Adam Pennington, "Henry VIII and the Plantagenet Poles: The Rise and Fall of a Dynasty" (Pen and Sword History, 2024)

15 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The story of King Henry VIII, a man who married six times only to execute two of those wives, is part of Great Britain’s national and international ...

Marie-France Fortin, "The King Can Do No Wrong: Constitutional Fundamentals, Common Law History, and Crown Liability" (Oxford UP, 2024)

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

'The king can do no wrong' remains one of the most fundamental yet misunderstood tenets of the common law tradition. Confusion over the phrase's histo...

Patricia Owens, "Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men" (Princeton UP, 2025)

13 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The academic field of international relations presents its own history as largely a project of elite white men. And yet women played a prominent role ...

Philip Howell, "Pub" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The pub is an English institution. Yet its history has been obscured by myth and nostalgia. In Pub (Bloomsbury, 2025) a new addition to the Object L...

Divya Kannan, "Contested Childhoods: Caste and Education in Colonial Kerala" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Contested Childhoods: Caste and Education in Colonial Kerala (Cambridge UP, 2024) traces a complex history of caste, race, education, and Christian m...

Peter J. Bowler, "Evolution for the People: Shaping Popular Ideas from Darwin to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

09 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From Darwin's The Origin of Species to the twenty-first century, Peter Bowler reinterprets the long Darwinian Revolution by refocussing our attention ...

Martin D. Brown et al., "The Bondian Cold War: The Transnational Legacy of a Cultural Icon" (Routledge, 2024)

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

James Bond, Ian Fleming’s irrepressible and ubiquitous ‘spy,’ is often understood as a Cold Warrior, but James Bond’s Cold War diverged from t...

Rosemary Wakeman, "The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918–1941" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

06 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 1920s and 1930s were a period of cosmopolitan globalization–and no one, perhaps, exemplified it more than Victor Sassoon, business tycoon, trade...

Jean Strouse, "Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers" (FSG, 2024)

04 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the height of his career, Sargent painted twelve portraits of the Wertheimer family, commissioned by Asher Wertheimer, a German-Jewish London art d...

Whitney Dirks, "Monstrosity, Bodies, and Knowledge in Early Modern England" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Whitney Dirks joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Monstrosity, Bodies, and Knowledge in Early Modern England: Curiosity to See and Behold (...

Blessin Adams, "Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain" (HarperCollins, 2025)

02 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Early Modern Britain was awash with pamphlets, ballads, woodcuts broadcasting bloodthirsty tales of traitorous wives, greedy mistresses, cunning femal...

Tolkien, Philosopher of War: A Conversation with Graham McAleer

30 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we explore the profound philosophical and theological dimensions of J.R.R. Tolkien's work, particularly his views on war. In his book...

A. G. Hopkins, "Capitalism in the Colonies: African Merchants in Lagos, 1851–1931" (Princeton UP, 2024)

30 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Capitalism in the Colonies: African Merchants in Lagos, 1851–1931 (Princeton UP, 2024), A. G. Hopkins provides the first substantial assessment...

Peter Brian Barry, "George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality" (Oxford UP, 2023)

29 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

George Orwell is sometimes read as disinterested in (if not outright hostile) to philosophy. Yet a fair reading of Orwell's work reveals an author who...

Benjamin Carter Hett, "The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War" (Henry Holt, 2020)

28 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Berlin, November 1937. Adolf Hitler meets with his military commanders to impress upon them the urgent necessity for a war of aggression in eastern Eu...

Christopher Burnham, "Sir Ronald Storrs: Personality and Policy in Mandate Palestine, 1917-1926" (Routledge, 2024)

28 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This volume utilises the personal papers of Sir Ronald Storrs, as well as other archival materials, to make a microhistorical investigation of his per...

Matthew McCormack, "Shoes and the Georgian Man" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

24 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shoes are everyday objects but they are loaded with meaning. Shoes and the Georgian Man (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Matthew McCormack reveals how shoe...

"Kazuo Ishiguro is Not Writing World Literature"

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How has a writer known principally for his contained domestic novels come to represent the most dynamic elements of world literature? In Kazuo Ishigu...

Andy Wightman, "The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it" (Birlinn, 2025)

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who owns Scotland? How did they get it? What happened to all the common land in Scotland? Has the Scottish Parliament made any difference? Can we get ...

Michelle D. Brock, "Plagues of the Heart: Crisis and Covenanting in a Seventeenth-Century Scottish Town" (Manchester UP, 2024)

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Using a wide range of archival material and a microhistorical approach, Plagues of the Heart: Crisis and Covenanting in a Seventeenth-Century Scottis...

April-Louise Pennant, "Babygirl, You've Got This!: Experiences of Black Girls and Women in the English Education System" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

21 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do Black women experience education in Britain? Within British educational research about Black students, gender distinctions have been largely ab...

Catherine Butler, "British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture: Wonderlands and Looking-Glasses" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Whether watching Studio Ghibli adaptations of British children's books, visiting Harry Potter sites in Britain or eating at Alice in Wonderland-theme...

Steven King, "Fraudulent Lives: Imagining Welfare Cheats from the Poor Law to the Present" (McGill Queen's UP, 2024)

19 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Western welfare state model is beset with structural, financial, and moral crises. So-called scroungers, cheats, and disability fakers persistentl...

Melissa B. Reynolds, "Reading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

17 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What do you do when you feel an itchy throat coming on? You probably head online, first to search for your symptoms and then to evaluate the informat...