Latest Reviews

Bathing at the Edge of the Roman Empire: Baths and Bathing Habits in the North-Western Corner of Continental Europe / Dr Sadi Maréchal, Ghent University

FRIDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER, 2024

After experiencing a ‘golden age’ in the ’90s and early 2000s, the study of Roman baths somehow lagged in the last decade or so. For instance, baths surprisingly played a marginal role in the debate about the process of cultural change promoted by Rome in her provinces, especially in the northern regions of the empire.Continue reading "Bathing at the Edge of the Roman Empire: Baths and Bathing Habits in the North-Western Corner of Continental Europe"

Gold and Swingler / Katrina Goldstone

WEDNESDAY, 1 MAY, 2024

From the 1920s-1940s, in America and Britain, many writers, artists, poets, musicians and other cultural workers were drawn to socially democratic artforms, influenced by Popular Front cultural aesthetics. The very broad group, which may have been ‘pro Communist’ politically and interested in diverse expressions of egalitarianism culturally, are frequently defined mainly in relationship to theContinue reading "Gold and Swingler"

A Culture of Curiosity: Science in the Eighteenth-Century Home / Leonie Hannan

FRIDAY, 1 MARCH, 2024

Lucy J. Havard reviews an 'immensely enjoyable and engaging' look at scientific enquiry as it took place in the eighteenth-century home.

Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and USSR / Diana Cucuz

FRIDAY, 12 JANUARY, 2024

Thomas Ellis reviews Diana Cucuz's book on women, gender, and the politics of selling U.S. consumer culture and domesticity during the early Cold War through "polite propaganda."