All at sea
MARITIME All at sea The Ship Asunder: A Maritime History of Britain in Eleven Vessels by Tom Nancollas Particular Books, 336 pages, £20 In the office of Lloyd’s of London, the pioneers of marine insurance, hangs the Lutine bell, recovered from the wreck of the ship Lutine in 1858. From Georgian ship deck to sea […]
First letters
LANGUAGE First letters Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present by Johanna Drucker University of Chicago Press, 384 pages, £32 At the heart of one of the world’s great storehouses of knowledge, the rooms built by Pope Sixtus V in the Vatican Library, are a series of pillars which literally […]
A congregation of voices
CHRISTIANITY A congregation of voices SARAH FOOT enjoys a new history of the Church of England, a book that finds space for the reflections of ordinary parishioners as well charting the deeds of the great and the good A People’s Church: A History of the Church of England by Jeremy Morris Profile Books, 480 pages, […]
From fact to fiction
FROM FACT TO FICTION Getting the scoop Louisa Treger (below) discusses her novel about the investigative journalist Nellie Bly, who went undercover as an asylum inmate What drew you to Nellie Bly’s story? Nellie Bly fascinated me from the start. I wondered what kind of woman could feign madness and commit herself to an asylum […]
Grave insights
ARCHAEOLOGY Grave insights BRENNA HASSETT recommends an account of life – and individual deaths – in Britain during the first millennium AD Buried: An Alternative History of the First Millennium in Britain by Alice Roberts Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, £20 Professor Alice Roberts opens her warm and illustrative history of Britain’s first millennium AD […]
Generating fear
SCIENCE Generating fear STEPHEN WALKER gives a nervous welcome to a history of nuclear power, which focuses on the accidents and the disasters that have plagued the sector Atoms and Ashes: From Bikini Atoll to Fukushima by Serhii Plokhy Allen Lane, 368 pages, £25 Unless most life as we know it has been wiped off […]
Authors on the podcast
Authors on the podcast Phillipa Vincent-Connolly on Tudor disability “There was a strange mix of attitudes towards disability in the Tudor period. On the one hand, it was thought that if the mother had been involved in satanic worship, or the parents had sinned greatly, it might affect the baby in the womb. Yet, people […]
The final slog
MILITARY The final slog TAYLOR DOWNING salutes an account of the often overlooked last days of the Second World War in Europe, when Allied troops faced stubborn resistance from German forces 1945: Victory in the West by Peter Caddick-Adams Hutchinson Heinemann, 652 pages, £30 February 1945. For many, the war in Europe is pretty well […]
The Queen
www.buysubscriptions.com/Queen2022
Raised by wolves
WILD CHILDREN Raised by wolves Feral children have fascinated and frightened people for centuries, raising questions about what it means to be human. Richard Sugg shares the stories of some of these wild children – and explains why their return to society was not always a happy one Join me for a moment at a […]