Browse all reviews
The Politics of Biography in Africa: Borders, Margins, and Alternative Histories of Power / ed. Anaïs Angelo
Review Date: 09 November 2023
Anaïs Angelo’s new edited collection, The Politics of Biography in Africa: Borders, Margins, and Alternative Histories of Power, explores themes within, and approaches to, writing and using biography in the pan-African context. It sits within an increasing amount of scholarship using biography as both method and mode of African history.
Milk / eds. Honor Beddard, Marianne Templeton
Review Date: 30 September 2023
The very first displays in Milk, a major Wellcome Collection exhibition, convey the strangeness of a food we all know well. Entitled 'the story of milk', the opening room sparks reflection on the oddness of the narratives and images imprinted on a deceptively simple part of our diet.
Once We Were Slaves: The Extraordinary Journey of a Multi-Racial Jewish Family / Laura Arnold Leibman
Review Date: 25 August 2023
Sometimes (not often enough) an academic book comes along that ticks all the boxes: it is based on thorough research, spanning archives on different continents, engaging with rich and varied source materials; it is held together by a tight set of themes; it is written in beautiful prose.
Nehru’s Voice /
Review Date: 11 May 2023
The Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru have been published in 100 volumes. The first 15 volumes together make up the First Series, and the following 85 are the Second Series. These roughly cover the pre- and post-1946 periods and are thus divided by the formation of the interim government in India during the transfer of power from British rule.
The Strange Survival of Liberal Britain: Politics and Power Before the First World War / Vernon Bogdanor
Review Date: 28 February 2023
This magnum opus of 842 pages, plus notes, takes the reader from 1895, and the politics of Unionism, to the onset of the First World War. It deals with every subject a reader interested to understand modern Britain might want to know, from domestic questions like the rise of the Labour Party to imperial issues like Britain’s complex relationship with Japan.
The Indentured Archipelago: Experiences of Indian Labour in Mauritius and Fiji, 1871–1916 / Reshaad Durgahee
Review Date: 27 January 2023
Between 1834 and 1917, some 1.37 million Indian migrants travelled the length and breadth of the British Empire under contracts of indentureship.
The Crimean War and its Afterlife: Making Modern Britain / Lara Kriegel
Review Date: 04 November 2022
Writing in Macmillan’s Magazine a few years after the denouement of the Crimean War, Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown’s School Days, declared that this conflict’s ‘drama ... will never fail deeply to move the heart of England, at least until the grave has closed over our generation.
Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918 / Katja Hoyer
Review Date: 07 October 2022
The publicity surrounding the German empire has not been good lately, to put it mildly. In August 2020, several hundred members of the far-right Reichsbürger (‘Reich Citizens’) group tried to storm the German parliament building in Berlin. They did so while holding the red, white, and black flags of Imperial Germany.
Soldiers, Saints, and Shamans / Nathaniel Morris
Review Date: 12 August 2022
The period 1910-40 was tumultuous in Mexican history. The armed phase of the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) was followed by fragmented attempts by Revolutionary politicians to assert Federal control and modernisation in the face of military rebellion, resistance to social reform, two major religious revolts known as the Cristiada, and ongoing, albeit often unremarked, agency from Mexico’s indigenous populations.
Migrant City: A New History of London / Panikos Panayi
Review Date: 30 June 2022
According to a survey carried out by the National Federation of Fish Fryers in the 1960s, the first fish and chip shop was opened by Joseph Malins in 1860 on Old Ford Road in the East End of London (p. 234).