history
Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain, Northampton Saints review - history made funnyMonday, 20 July 2020
In each of its incarnations – books, television series and theatre shows – covering more than 80 titles, Horrible Histories, created by Terry Deary, has been a hit. Children love the stories' anarchic humour and gory details, while parents and... Read more... |
Hamilton, Disney+ review - puts us all in the room where it happenedWednesday, 01 July 2020
The movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights was meant to hit cinemas this summer, but, in response to Covid-19, has been put back to 2021. Instead, we get the early release on Disney+ of Miranda’s Hamilton – filmed, NT Live style,... Read more... |
A. Kendra Greene: The Museum of Whales You Will Never See review - a thoughtful museum pieceSaturday, 27 June 2020
The Museum of Whales is an unfolding: a slow process of describing a country, its people, and its past through its esoteric and bizarre museums. The book is structured into galleries and cabinets, like the museums it describes, and the text is... Read more... |
Joan of Arc review – tough little numberSaturday, 20 June 2020
Jeanne d’Arc was 19, she believed, when she was tried for heresy by her English enemies in Rouen in 1431. Of the actors who have played her onscreen – Falconetti, Ingrid Bergman, Jean Seberg, Leelee Sobieski, Milla Jovovich among them – none has... Read more... |
Yuri Herrera: A Silent Fury review – the fire last timeSunday, 14 June 2020
History, as protestors around the world currently insist, can be the art of forgetting – and erasure – as much as of memory. Although it explores a single incident from a century ago, Yuri Herrera’s brief, forensic but quietly impassioned account of... Read more... |
A House Through Time, Series 3, BBC Two review - Bristol under the microscopeWednesday, 27 May 2020
David Olusoga’s A House Through Time concept (BBC Two) has proved a popular hit, using a specific property as a keyhole through which to observe historical and social changes. After previously picking sites in Liverpool and Newcastle, this time he’s... Read more... |
Rutger Bregman: Humankind, a Hopeful History review – nice guys finish firstSunday, 10 May 2020
In retrospect, we will surely see that British battles over the Covid-19 lockdown harboured within them a bitter but half-hidden war of ideas. On one side, the behavioural scientists who first guided policy seemed to depend on a model of human... Read more... |
The Last Kingdom, Season 4, Netflix review - blood, guts and dirty politicsSaturday, 09 May 2020
Meanwhile back in the Dark Ages, Uhtred (son of Uhtred) is still seeking to reclaim his ancestral seat of Bebbanburg and manoeuvre through the treacherous currents of Saxon politics. The big question was, how would this fourth season manage in the... Read more... |
Visual Arts Lockdown Special 2: read, search, listen, createTuesday, 05 May 2020
Arguably one of the most poignant effects of the lockdown has been to simultaneously draw attention to the connections between the arts and the distinct ways they have evolved into their own forms. Sculpture, painting, textiles, performance art,... Read more... |
Drawing the Line, Hampstead Theatre online review - modern history becomes dark farceTuesday, 14 April 2020
This week’s gem from the Hampstead’s vaults is Howard Brenton’s political drama from 2013, telling the extraordinary, stranger-than-fiction story of Cyril Radcliffe and his 1947 mission: to arrange the Partition of India in just five weeks. A tale... Read more... |
Belgravia, ITV review - when the toffs and the nouveaux riches collidedMonday, 16 March 2020
The prolific Lord Fellowes returns with this six-part adaptation of his own novel (for ITV), a niftily-wrought yarn (originally issued in online instalments) about the old aristocracy and the rise of new money in the early 19th Century. Some are... Read more... |
'You’re Jewish. With a name like Neumann, you have to be'Monday, 24 February 2020
It was during my first week at Tufts University in America, when I was 17, that I was told by a stranger that I was Jewish. As I left one of the orientation talks, I was approached by a slight young man with short brown hair and intense eyes. He... Read more... |
