Murders for the end of the month
From laugh-out-louds to gripping plots, Jeremy Black recommends murder mysteries for the end of the month
Three first-rate books on maps
What about the past should and could be mapped, and how to do so, are vexed issues in cartographic studies
Louis XIV: a monarch of purpose
Despite its length, Philip Mansel’s biography of the Sun King is ‘a welcome prize for any reviewer’
Murders ranging widely
Jeremy Black recommends an array of crime fiction novels, both modern and classic, to keep you entertained in January
Murders for January
Jeremy Black recommends the best murder mysteries to read in the New Year
Atlases aren’t dead yet
Jeremy Black pores over the latest offerings from the scholarly literature on cartography
Ignorance on the Cam
The latest issue of University of Cambridge’s Alumni Magazine encourages ignorant rejection of Britain’s past
Mapping the past
The new edition of Tom Harper’s ‘Atlas: A World of Maps’ is an instructive as well as attractive volume
Murder stories for December days
Jeremy Black makes his way through the British Library’s Crime Classics collection
Between war and empire
Jeremy Black weighs in on two recent historiographical offerings
My eighteenth century life
Black’s History Week, with Professor Jeremy Black and Graham Stewart
France between Belle Epoque and Blitzkrieg
Professor Jeremy Black talks to Graham Stewart about what made French politics and society distinctive in the decades before and after WWI
Fairy tales have gone woke
Pulling up fairy tales by the roots in the name of feminism makes barren fare for the reader
Parliament is preparing to meet next week to vote on EU trade deal
The announcement may come on Thursday – regardless of whether a deal is concluded by that day
John le Carré: a man who rose through the English class system as it was collapsing
John le Carré’s voice of old-fashioned English authority was one acquired through merit and bearing rather than birth
Are Brexiteer MPs happy?
Somebody is being played for a fool and the ERG are starting to think it isn’t Brussels
Acts of faith
Hephzibah Anderson plants her spring bulbs
Peculiar world of a singular talent
Highsmith was a great writer, with a moral vision bracing enough to clarify the terrors of the twentieth century
The spirit of Liverpool’s stories
Liverpool’s at ease with itself, the south should be too
Lockdown sceptics are society’s gadflies
‘I can’t agree with Alistair Haimes that the arrival of vaccines should change how we feel about lockdowns’