Britain’s Slave Traders by William A. Pettigrew
Summary: a vital work of British history that does much to explain why one protracted crime against humanity reverberates into the present. Britain’s Slave Traders is an elegantly written and deeply researched work of history, chronicling Britain’s role in one of the most shameful episodes in human history: the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. It is also…
The Birthday Boys, by Samuel Thompson
Summary: the extraordinary nature of ordinary lives Sam Thompson’s first novel, Nights in Armour, a fine account of the lives of peelers during the Troubles, had something of the seminal 1980s cop show Hill Street Blues about it. The Birthday Boys brings to mind a rather different television series, thirtysomething … though the Birthday Boys of the title are now closer to…
Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
Summary: A chilling account of what happens when the American presidency ceases to recognise meaningful limits on its own power. In her 2022 Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Maggie Haberman provided both an explanation of what makes Donald Trump and a warning about what he might do if given power…
Judgement at Tokyo, by Gary J. Bass
Summary: A gripping account of the flawed and politically compromised attempt to bring Japan’s wartime leaders to justice. The title of Gary Bass’s book echoes that of the Spencer Tracy classic Judgment at Nuremberg. Like the film, the book intercuts biographies of key participants—including the judges and defendants—with appalling accounts of the Japanese atrocities under consideration.…
Operation Chiffon, by Peter Taylor
Summary: An indispensable channel, but not the Peace Process Operation Chiffon is Peter Taylor’s account of the “Back Channel”: the secret line of communication maintained intermittently between the British government and the IRA from the 1970s into the Peace Process. Taylor focuses particularly on the MI6 officer Michael Oatley, his MI5 successor, known only as…
Here Where We Live Is Our Country, by Molly Crabapple
Summary: Recovering a forgotten Jewish history, vital for our times At the end of the nineteenth century, Zionism emerged both as a response to European antisemitism and, in a fundamental way, as an acceptance of one of antisemitism’s central claims: that Jews could never truly belong in Europe. Its answer was a Jewish “homeland,” ultimately…
The Shortest History of Ireland, by James Hawes
Summary: “… in this great future we can’t forget our past, so dry your tears I say…” Perhaps not quite as arresting as his Shortest History of Germany, but James Hawes Shortest History of Ireland is an exquisite thing. Rather than allow himself to lose narrative momentum, Hawes does, perhaps, skip over a few historical…
Glorious Exploits, by Ferdia Lennon
Summary: Theatre in a theatre of brutal war. Glorious Exploits is something of a literary first cousin to Michael Hughes’ superb Country, a retelling of the Iliad transposed to the mountains of South Armagh during the Troubles. Like Hughes, Lennon tells his story of the ancient world in an Irish vernacular – Dublish, in this instance – and…
The August Uprising, 1924: The Georgian Anti-Soviet Revolt and the Birth of Democratic Socialism, by Eric Lee
Summary: an account of how an abortive insurrection in Georgia irrevocably split the Left There is an anecdote in Cyril Cusack’s short book, The Humour is on Me, about a TV cameraman filming pro-British, loyalist, rioting in Belfast during the 1970s. The unfortunate journalist was set upon by a woman armed with an umbrella, offended by…
The Cut Throat Trial, by the Secret Barrister
Summary: One of these suspects is not like the others … As aficionados of Rumpole will know, a “cut-throat” trial is one in which co-defendants turn on each other. That is the heart of this novel about three boys accused of murder — a case that also involves a victim nearly decapitated, so there is…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
