Reviews I have written recently, appearing in the Sunday Times. The Marriage Question by Clare Carlisle - why George Eliot is still relevant today: George Eliot had very unconventional views on marriage and a long relationship with a married man (19 March 2023) The Treasuries: Poetry Anthologies and the Making of British Culture by Clare Bucknell - we learnt their lines by heart and they shaped our national culture: Clare Bucknell’s dazzling history of poetry anthologies and their influence on our culture over the past four centuries (15 January 2023) Next to Nature by Ronald Blythe: my 100 year love affair with the English countryside: The Akenfield author Ronald Blythe has written a warm, funny and moving nature memoir (06 November 2022) The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopaedia Britannica by Simon Garfield: A forage through the volumes once sold door-to-door to every home reveals how much we’ve changed (28 August 2022) The Celts by Simon Jenkins - what ties together the Scots, Welsh and Irish?: Simon Jenkins has written a provocative history just as the union comes under threat (19 June 2022) TS Eliot: by Robert Crawford - sex, betrayal and three women who loved him: The poet left his first wife in an asylum, betrayed the woman who adored him for decades and then married his 30-year-old secretary (5 June 2022) The sordid side of Casanova - a vivid biography of depravity by Leo Damrosch: Sex with nuns, children and his own daughter - this new study reveals a much darker side to the famous adventurer (22 May 2022) Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy with Kids by Scott Hershovitz: A philosopher tackles some of life’s trickiest questions, with the help of Rex, 4, and Hank, 5 (1 May 2022) Battles of Conscience by Tobias Kelly - the hard price of pacifism: Being a conscientious objector in wartime Britain was not an easy option (24 April 2022) Dinner with Joseph Johnson by Daisy Hay - the man who inspired Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake: An unknown publisher brought together the finest minds of his age (27 March 2022) Arnold Bennett by Patrick Donovan - the bestselling author hated by Virginia Woolf: It’s high time we gave this author the credit he deserves (6 March 2022) No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy by Mark Hodkinson - a hymn to the joy of reading: One working-class boy and how the discovery of books changed his life (20 February 2022) Conquered by Eleanor Parker - Anglo-Saxon life after the Norman conquest: Guerrilla warfare, the first Robin Hood and how two decades after 1066 the English owned only 6 per cent of their own land (6 February 2022) Constable: A Portrait by James Hamilton - an eye-opening biography of the artist: This life of the celebrated landscape painter is full of surprises (30 January 2022) Accidental Gods by Anna Della Subin - Prince Philip, Haile Selassie and Hitler: The men who were declared divine while they were still alive (2 January 2022) Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit - the George Orwell we didn’t know about: The author’s little-known love of the natural world is explored in these curious essays (12 December 2021) Sybil & Cyril: Cutting Through Time by Jenny Uglow - how two artists transformed lino into striking images: Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power are celebrated in a joint biography that’s a ‘joy to read’ (14 November 2021) The Young HG Wells by Claire Tomalin - The Time Machine author’s endless promiscuity detailed: HG Wells’s womanising dominates this richly detailed life (31 October 2021) The Library: A Fragile History by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen - from papyrus scrolls to today: This sweeping history of libraries is outstanding (17 October 2021) Making Darkness Light by Joe Moshenska - John Milton as we’ve never seen him before: This new life of the poet gets up close and personal (3 October 2021) The Searchers by Robert Sackville-West - the quest for the lost of the First World War: A remarkable account of the agonising search for the missing soldiers of the 1914-18 war (19 September 2021) The Radical Potter by Tristram Hunt - how Wedgwood astonished the world: Disability meant this potter could not turn a wheel, but that didn’t stop his genius (29 August 2021) The Turning Point: A Year That Changed Dickens and the World by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst - under the microscope: Was the year of the Great Exhibition a significant one for Charles Dickens? (22 August 2021)
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