New Books in British Studies

Alan Marshall, "Intelligence and Espionage in the English Republic C. 1600-60" (Manchester UP, 2023)

24 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Alan Marshall's book Intelligence and Espionage in the English Republic C. 1600-60 (Manchester UP, 2023) is a richly detailed account of the ideas ...

Robert Kershaw, "Dünkirchen 1940: The German View of Dunkirk" (Osprey, 2022)

23 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The surprise success of the German offensive in the West that commenced on May 10, 1940 caught the Allies completely off-guard, and France would soon ...

The 10,000 Year Build-Up to Brexit: A Conversation with Ian Morris

21 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How did Britain become a global superpower? Historian and classicist Ian Morris thinks geography has a lot to do with it. Prof. Morris discusses his l...

Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of The Fern Loved Gully

19 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tai Shani (Turner Prize winning artist, educator and author of Our Fatal Magic) and Amy Hale (anthropologist, folklorist, and writer) discuss the...

Troy Bickham, "Eating the Empire: Food and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain" (Reaktion Books, 2020)

19 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When students gathered in a London coffeehouse and smoked tobacco; when Yorkshire women sipped sugar-infused tea; or when a Glasgow family ate a bowl ...

Esme Cleall, "Colonising Disability: Impairment and Otherness Across Britain and Its Empire, c. 1800-1914" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

19 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Colonising Disability: Impairment and Otherness Across Britain and Its Empire, c. 1800-1914 (Cambridge UP, 2022) explores the construction and treatm...

Michael Brown, "Emotions and Surgery in Britain, 1793-1912" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

10 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this innovative analytical account of the place of emotion and embodiment in nineteenth-century British surgery, Michael Brown examines the changin...

Sita Balani, "Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race" (Verso, 2023)

05 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

If race is increasingly understood to be socially constructed, why does it continue to seem like a physiological reality? In Deadly and Slick: Sexual...

Tim Clarkson, "A Mighty Fleet and the King's Power: The Isle of Man, AD 400 To 1265" (John Donald, 2023)

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Situated in the middle of the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man is like a stepping-stone between the lands that surround it. In medieval times, it played an ...

Robin Prior, "Conquer We Must: A Military History of Britain, 1914-1945" (Yale UP, 2022)

28 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The First and Second World Wars were separated by a mere two decades, making the period 1914-1945 an unprecedentedly intense and violent era of histor...

Ferenc Hörcher, "Art and Politics in Roger Scruton's Conservative Philosophy" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ferenc Hörcher's book Art and Politics in Roger Scruton's Conservative Philosophy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) covers the field of and points to the ...

Benjamin L. Carp, "The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution" (Yale UP, 2023)

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

New York City, the strategic center of the Revolutionary War, was the most important place in North America in 1776. That summer, an unruly rebel army...

Scott Newstok, "How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education" (Princeton UP, 2020)

23 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education (Princeton UP, 2020) offers a short, spirited defense of rhetoric and the libera...

Vanessa Wilkie, "A Woman of Influence: The Spectacular Rise of Alice Spencer in Tudor England" (Atria Books, 2023)

22 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For readers of historical biography, meet Alice Spencer Stanley Egerton—the 16th century English noblewoman who was determined to bring her family ...

Elizabeth Elbourne, "Empire, Kinship and Violence: Family Histories, Indigenous Rights and the Making of Settler Colonialism, 1770-1842" (Cambridge UP., 2022)

21 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Empire, Kinship and Violence: Family Histories, Indigenous Rights and the Making of Settler Colonialism, 1770-1842 (Cambridge University Press, 2022)...

Cao Yin, "Chinese Sojourners in Wartime Raj, 1942-45" (Oxford UP, 2022)

19 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Since the outbreak of the Pacific War, British India had been taken as the main logistic base for China's war against the Japanese. Chinese soldiers, ...

Nicholas Guyatt, "The Hated Cage: An American Tragedy in Britain's Most Terrifying Prison" (Basic Books, 2022)

18 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After the War of 1812, more than five thousand American sailors were marooned in Dartmoor Prison on a barren English plain; the conflict was over but ...

Charles Read, "Calming the Storms: The Carry Trade, the Banking School and British Financial Crises Since 1825" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

17 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Calming the Storms: The Carry Trade, the Banking School and British Financial Crises Since 1825 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) by Dr. Charles Read expose...

Karen E. Eccles and Debbie McCollin, "World War II and the Caribbean" (U West Indies Press, 2017)

17 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Karen E. Eccles and Debbie McCollin edited volume World War II and the Caribbean (U West Indies Press, 2017) focuses on one of the most exciting per...

Arthur W. Gullachsen, "Bloody Verrières: the I. SS-Panzerkorps Defence of the Verrières-Bourguebus Ridges (Volume 2) (Casemate, 2023)

15 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

South of the Norman city of Caen, Verrières Ridge was seen a key stepping-stone for the British Second Army if it was to break out of the Normandy br...

David Edmonds, "Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality" (Princeton UP, 2023)

15 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Derek Parfit (1942-2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the ...

Freddy Foks, "Participant Observers: Anthropology, Colonial Development, and the Reinvention of Society in Britain" (U California Press, 2023)

14 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Freddy Foks's Participant Observers: Anthropology, Colonial Development, and the Reinvention of Society in Britain (U California Press, 2023) is a n...

John Miller, "The Heart of the Forest: Why Woods Matter" (British LIbrary, 2022)

12 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Heart of the Forest: Why Woods Matter (British Library, 2022) looks at threats to forest life across the globe. Dr. John Miller draws on literatu...

Amy Edwards, "Are We Rich Yet? The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain" (U California Press, 2022)

12 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How did British society become financialised? In Are We Rich Yet? The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain (U California Press, 2...

The Roots of Equity and Equality: A Conversation with Teresa Bejan

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The ideas of equity and equality are all over the news, yet there seems to be little agreement on what exactly each term means. Political theorist and...

Kate Strasdin, "The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe" (Pegasus Books, 2023)

10 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe (Penguin, 2023) by Dr. Kate Strasdin presents the hidden fabric of a Victorian woman's l...

Simon Strange, "Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity and the Development of Punk, Post Punk and New Wave Music" (Intellect, 2023)

08 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity From Punk to New Wave (Intellect Publishing, 2022), Simon Strange explores the relationship between art an...

Johnny Walker, "Rewind, Replay: Britain and the Video Boom, 1978-92" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

07 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nostalgia for the 1980s is in the air. From Stranger Things to the relaunch of 80s franchises like Top Gun, the American entertainment industry cas...

Patrick Bixby, "Nietzsche and Irish Modernism" (Manchester UP, 2022)

05 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Patrick Bixby's book Nietzsche and Irish Modernism (Manchester UP, 2022) demonstrates how the ideas of the controversial German philosopher played ...

Andrea Hammel, "Finding Refuge: Stories of the Men, Women and Children who fFed to Wales to Escape the Nazis" (Honno Press, 2022)

04 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A popular history telling the stories of people who found refuge in Wales from Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s. Finding Refuge will resonate with those...

Elizabeth Marshall, "Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts" (Boydell & Brewer, 2022)

02 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Two perceptions about wolves are inherited from ancient and medieval European lupine motifs: the superstition that the wolf could steal a person's spe...

Susan R. Grayzel, "The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

01 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode, we sit down with Dr. Susan R. Grayzel, Professor of History at Utah State University to discuss The Age of the Gas Mask: How British...

David Lester and Marcus Rediker, "Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic, a Graphic Novel" (Beacon Press, 2023)

31 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic, A Graphic Novel (Beacon Press, 2023) is a comic adaptation of Rediker’s now classic 2004 ...

Joshua D. Schendel, "The Necessity of Christ's Satisfaction: A Study of the Reformed Scholastic Theologians William Twisse (1578-1646) and John Owen (1616-1683)" (Brill, 2022)

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The seventeenth century Reformed Orthodox discussions of the work of Christ and its various doctrinal constitutive elements were rich and multifaceted...

Declan Warde et al., "Safety As We Watch: Anaesthesia in Ireland 1847-1998" (Wordwell Books, 2022)

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The discovery of anaesthesia which could be administered safely to eliminate the pain of surgery and other medical and dental procedures is widely con...

Woody Holton, "Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution" (Simon and Schuster, 2021)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A “deeply researched and bracing retelling” (Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian) of the American Revolution, showing how the ...

John P. Bequette, "Bede the Theologian: History, Rhetoric, and Spirituality" (Catholic U of America Press, 2022)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Revered by contemporaries and posterity for both his sanctity and his scholarship, Bede (672-735) is a pivotal figure in the history of the Church. Kn...

Andrew Phemister, "Land and Liberalism: Henry George and the Irish Land War" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Phemister is Research Associate at Newcastle University. He has previously held postdoctoral positions in History at NUI Galway, the University...

Arya Aryan, "The Postmodern Representation of Reality in Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton" (Cambridge Scholars, 2022)

19 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Arya Aryan's book The Postmodern Representation of Reality in Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton (Cambridge Scholars, 2022) explores the postmodernist repre...

Jessica Brantley, "Medieval English Manuscripts and Literary Forms" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

19 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest is Jessica Brantley, Professor of English at Yale University. Professor Rosenberg is the author of the previous monograph, Reading in...

Simon Parkin, "The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A Painter, a Poet, an Heiress, and a Spy in a World War II British Internment Camp" (Scribner, 2022)

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A Painter, a Poet, an Heiress, and a Spy in a World War II British Internment Camp (Scribner, 2022 is the “r...

Rick de Villiers, "Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism: Humility and Humiliation" (Edinburgh UP, 2021)

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Humility and humiliation have an awkward, often unacknowledged intimacy. Humility may be a queenly, cardinal or monkish virtue, while humiliation poin...

Hugh Hodges, "The Fascist Groove Thing: A History of Thatcher's Britain in 21 Mixtapes" (PM Press, 2023)

16 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This is the late 1970s and '80s as explained through the urgent and still-relevant songs of the Clash, the Specials, the Au Pairs, the Style Council, ...

Mary Flanagan and Mikael Jakobsson, "Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games" (MIT Press, 2023)

16 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games (MIT Press, 2023) by Dr. Mary Flanagan & Dr. Mikael Jakobsson is a s...

Hilary Falb Kalisman, "Teachers as State-Builders: Education and the Making of the Modern Middle East" (Princeton UP, 2022)

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today, it is hard to imagine a time and place when public school teachers were considered among the elite strata of society. But in the lands controll...

Laura Kolb, "Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare" (Oxford UP, 2021)

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare (Oxford University Press, 2021), Laura Kolb examines how Shakespeare and his contemporaries represen...

Rahul Sagar, "The Progressive Maharaja: Sir Madhava Rao's Hints on the Art and Science of Government" (Oxford UP, 2021)

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hints on the Art and Science of Government was the first treatise on statecraft produced in modern India. It consists of lectures that Raja Sir T. Ma...

Emily Steiner, "John Trevisa's Information Age: Knowledge and the Pursuit of Literature, c. 1400" (Oxford UP, 2021)

11 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What would medieval English literature look like if we viewed it through the lens of the compendium? In that case, John Trevisa might come into focus ...

Alison Stone, "Women Philosophers in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2023)

11 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many women wrote philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain, and they wrote across the full range of philosophical topics. Yet these important women thi...

Marion Turner, "The Wife of Bath: A Biography" (Princeton UP, 2023)

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English ...

Jessica Rosenberg, "Botanical Poetics: Early Modern Plant Books and the Husbandry of Print" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest is Jessica Rosenberg, who is the author of a new book titled Botanical Poetics: Early Modern Plant Books and the Husbandry of Print ...

Hilbourne A. Watson, "Errol Walton Barrow and the Postwar Transformation of Barbados: The Late Colonial Period" (U The West Indies Press, 2019)

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Beginning in the 1920s, Barbadians and other British West Indians began organizing politically in an international environment that was marked by a se...

Jacqueline Broad, "Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence" (Oxford UP, 2019)

08 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This volume collects the private letters and published epistles of English women philosophers of the early modern period (c. 1650-1700). It includes t...

Rotem Geva, "Delhi Reborn: Partition and Nation Building in India's Capital" (Stanford UP, 2022)

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Delhi, one of the world's largest cities, has faced momentous challenges—mass migration, competing governing authorities, controversies over citizen...

William Carruthers, "Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia, and the Recolonization of Archaeology" (Cornell UP, 2022)

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia, and the Recolonization of Archaeology (Cornell UP, 2022) examines a world famous yet critically underexamined event—...

Nicola Rollock, "The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival" (Penguin, 2022)

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why do racial inequalities persist? In The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival (Penguin, 2023), Nicola Rollock, a Professor of Social Po...

Hilbourne A. Watson, "Errol Walton Barrow and the Postwar Transformation of Barbados: The Independence Period, 1966-1976" (U West Indies Press, 2020)

04 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hilbourne A. Watson's Errol Walton Barrow and the Postwar Transformation of Barbados: The Independence Period, 1966-1976 (U West Indies Press, 2020)...

Caroline Rusterholz, "Women's Medicine: Family Planning and British Female Doctors in Transnational Perspective, 1920-70" (Manchester UP, 2021)

04 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Who built the twentieth century birth control movement? In Women's Medicine: Family Planning and British Female Doctors in Transnational Perspectiv...

Ben Davies et al., "Reading Novels During the Covid-19 Pandemic" (Oxford UP, 2022)

04 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing on an ethnographic study of novel readers in Denmark and the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic, Reading Novels During the Covid-19 Pandemic (O...

Geoffrey Parker and Colin Martin, "Armada: The Spanish Enterprise and England's Deliverance In 1588" (Yale UP, 2022)

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In July 1588 the Spanish Armada sailed from Corunna to conquer England. Three weeks later an English fireship attack in the Channel--and then a fierce...

Marcus Rediker, "The Slave Ship: A Human History" (Penguin, 2008)

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this widely praised history of an infamous institution, award-winning scholar Marcus Rediker shines a light into the darkest corners of the British...

Elizabeth T. Hurren, "Hidden Histories of the Dead: Disputed Bodies in Modern British Medical Research" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Hidden Histories of the Dead: Disputed Bodies in Modern British Medical Research (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Elizabeth T. Hurren maps...

Isabel Huacuja Alonso, "Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting Across Borders" (Columbia UP, 2022)

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From news about World War II to the broadcasting of music from popular movies, radio played a crucial role in an increasingly divided South Asia for m...

Frances Howard, "Global Perspectives on Youth Arts Programs: How and Why the Arts Can Make a Difference" (Policy Press, 2022)

27 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can the arts make the world a better place? In Global Perspectives on Youth Arts Programs: How and Why the Arts Can Make a Difference (Policy Pr...

Caroline Dodds Pennock, "On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe" (Knopf, 2023)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe (Knopf, 2023) by Dr. Caroline Dodds Pennock presents a landmark work of narrative histor...

Nicolai Jørgensgaard Graakjær, "The Sounds of Spectators at Football" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

25 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The sounds of spectators at football (soccer) are often highlighted – by spectators, tourists, commentators, journalists, scholars, media producers,...

Adrian Fraser, "The 1935 Riots in St Vincent: From Riots to Adult Suffrage" (U West Indies Press, 2016)

25 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

St Vincent was among the earliest of the British Caribbean colonies to have experienced labour disturbances in the 1930s. While disturbances in the ot...

Anthony Bale, "Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life" (Reaktion Books, 2022)

25 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life (Reaktion Books, 2022) is a new account of the medieval mystic and pilgrim Margery Kempe. Kempe, who had fourteen childr...

Joseph T. Stuart, "Christopher Dawson: A Cultural Mind in the Age of the Great War" (Catholic U of America Press, 2022)

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) was a British historian who was deeply shaken by the Great War (1914-1918) and sought to explore the history of differe...

Elizabeth Lhost, "Everyday Islamic Law and the Making of Modern South Asia" (UNC Press, 2022)

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Beginning in the late eighteenth century, British rule transformed the relationship between law, society, and the state in South Asia. But professiona...

Oren Kessler, "Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In spring 1936, the Holy Land erupted in a rebellion that targeted both the local Jewish community and the British Mandate authorities that for two de...

Leila Jancovich and David Stevenson, "Failures in Cultural Participation" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

20 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For the past two decades, the arts and cultural establishment in the UK has been trying to engage a broader set of audiences in their work. Countless ...

Alan Meades, "Arcade Britannia: A Social History of the British Amusement Arcade" (MIT Press, 2022)

18 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the British amusement arcade from the 1800s to the present.  Amusement arcades are an important part of British culture, yet discussions...

Kathy E. Ferguson, "Letterpress Revolution: The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture" (Duke UP, 2023)

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

While the stock image of the anarchist as a masked bomber or brick thrower prevails in the public eye, a more representative figure should be a printe...

Mary C. Flannery, "Practicing Shame: Female Honour in Later Medieval England" (Manchester UP, 2019)

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Practicing shame investigates how the literature of medieval England encouraged women to safeguard their honour by cultivating hypervigilance against ...

Lisa Haushofer, "Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition" (U California Press, 2022)

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From Gail Borden’s meat biscuit to John Harvey Kellogg’s peptogenic foods for race betterment and Fleishmann’s yeast as both technology of empir...

Spencer Jones, "The Darkest Year: The British Army on the Western Front 1917" (Helion and Company, 2021)

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Darkest Year: The British Army on the Western Front 1917 (Helion and Company, 2021), leading First World War historians examine key aspects o...

M. Christhu Doss, "India after the 1857 Revolt: Decolonising the Mind" (Routledge, 2022)

12 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In India after the 1857 Revolt: Decolonising the Mind (Routledge, 2022), M. Christhu Doss brings together some of the most cutting-edge thoughts b...

Suzanne Francis-Brown, "World War II Camps in Jamaica: Refugees, Internees, Prisoners of War" (U West Indies Press, 2022)

12 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1939 and 1947, the Caribbean island of Jamaica--then a British colony--was haven or detention centre for thousands of displaced Europeans; an...

The Future of the News: A Discussion with Roger Mosey

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is the future of news? In the twentieth century Western-educated journalists championed impartial, unbiased news – which always seemed rather o...

John Goodlad, "The Salt Roads: How Fish Made a Culture" (Birlinn, 2022)

10 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Salt Roads: How Fish Made a Culture (Birlinn, 2022) by John Goodlad is the extraordinary story of how salt fish from Shetland became one of the s...

Jane Hwang Degenhardt, "Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage" (Oxford UP, 2022)

10 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How were understandings of chance, luck, and fortune affected by early capitalist developments such as the global expansion of English trade and colon...

Francis M. Carroll, "America and the Making of an Independent Ireland: A History" (NYU Press, 2021)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On Easter Day 1916, more than a thousand Irishmen stormed Dublin city center, seizing the General Post Office building and reading the Proclamation fo...

Ben Burgis, "Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters" (Zero Books, 2022)

07 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters (Zero Books, 2022), Ben Burgis reminds readers about what wa...

Matthew Taylor, "Sport and the Home Front: Wartime Britain at Play, 1939-45" (Routledge, 2020)

04 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are joined by Matthew Taylor, Professor of History at De Montfort University, and author of Sport and the Home Front: Wartime Britain at Pla...

Curtis Runstedler, "Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

03 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Curtis Runstedler's book Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) explores the different functions and ...

Angela Hui, "Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter" (Trapeze, 2022)

02 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Food journalist Angela Hui grew up in rural Wales, as daughter to the owners of the Lucky Star Chinese takeaway. Angela grew up behind the counter, ...

The 10,000 Year Build-Up to Brexit: A Conversation with Ian Morris

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How did Britain become a global superpower? Historian and classicist Ian Morris thinks geography has a lot to do with it. Prof. Morris discusses his l...

Book Talk 57: Anne Fernald and Rajgopal Saikumar on Virginia Woolf's "Three Guineas" (1938)

30 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Virginia Woolf’s 1938 provocative and polemical essay Three Guineas presents the iconic writer’s views on war, women, and the way the patriarchy...

Corey Lee Wrenn, "Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony" (SUNY Press, 2021)

28 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Irish vegan studies are poised for increasing relevance as climate change threatens the legitimacy and longevity of animal agriculture and widespread ...

David S. Painter and Gregory Brew, "The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951-1954" (UNC Press, 2023)

28 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Beginning with the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in spring 1951 and ending with its reversal following the overthrow of Prime Minister M...

Francesca Sobande and layla-roxanne hill. "Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

27 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to be Black in Scotland today? How are notions of nationhood, Scottishness, and Britishness implicated in this? Why is it important ...

Uther Charlton-Stevens, "Anglo-India and the End of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022)

26 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It can be easy to think of colonies as having two populations: colonial subjects, and colonial overlords from Europe. It’s an easy narrative: one ha...

Wolfgang P. Müller, "Marriage Litigation in the Western Church, 1215-1517" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

21 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Wolfgang Muller, Marriage Litigation in the Western Church, 1215- 1517 (Cambridge University Press, 2021). From the establishment of a coherent doc...

The Future of the European Left

20 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why is it so hard for left wing parties in the West to win elections? Some such as the UK Labour Party have headed to the centre. The history of Labou...

Marion Turner, "The Wife of Bath: A Biography" (Princeton UP, 2023)

17 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English ...

Stuart Carroll, "Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

16 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stuart Carroll's Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2023) transforms our understanding of Europe between 1500 ...

Richard Davenport-Hines, "Conservative Thinkers from All Souls College Oxford" (Boydell & Brewer, 2022)

15 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

All Souls College Oxford was one of the meeting points of English public intellectuals in the twentieth century. Its Fellows prided themselves on agre...

Restless Pilgrims: About CS Lewis

11 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

David Bates, Catholic apologist and CS Lewis expert, reflects upon Lewis's conversion (how he was 'surprised by joy'), how his reason confirmed his fe...

Ciara Breathnach, "Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class: Dublin City Coroner's Court, 1876-1902" (Oxford UP, 2022)

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ciara Breathnach's book Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class: Dublin City Coroner's Court, 1876-1902 (Oxford UP, 2022) focuses on the evolution o...