Listen to Owen Bennett-Jones discuss the future of opinion polls with Mark Pack

New Books Network
British Studies
General History May 16, 2022

High Minds

The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain

Simon Heffer

Hosted by Albert Zambone
Britain in the 1840s should have been, observes Simon Heffer, a time of great social improvement. Instead it was a country that was beset by poverty, unrest, assassination attempts on …

British Studies

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Interviews with scholars of the United Kingdom about their new books.

Medicine May 13, 2022

Difference and Disease

Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire

Suman Seth

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Before the nineteenth century, travelers who left Britain for the Americas, West Africa, India and elsewhere encountered a medical conundrum: why did they fall ill when they arrived, and why …
Indian Ocean World May 11, 2022

Dockside Reading

Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House

Isabel Hofmeyr

Hosted by Kelvin Ng
In Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House (Duke University Press, 2022), Isabel Hofmeyr traces the relationships among print culture, colonialism, and the ocean through the institution of the British …
Policing, Incarceration, and Reform May 9, 2022

Deep Deception

The Story of the Spycop Network, by the Women Who Uncovered the Shocking Truth

Helen Steel et al.

Hosted by Catriona Gold
In Deep Deception: The Story of the Spycop Network, by the Women Who Uncovered the Shocking Truth (Ebury, 2022), five women discuss their experiences of being manipulated into serious long-term …
Law May 6, 2022

Indelible City

Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong

Louisa Lim

Hosted by Jane Richards
In this timely book, award-winning journalist and longtime Hong Konger, Louisa Lim, weaves together Hong Kong's fraught political and social history with her own first hand account of the spirit …
Critical Theory May 6, 2022

Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski

The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century

Dhanveer Singh Brar

Hosted by Gummo Clare
Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century (Goldsmiths Press, 2021) uses three Black electronic musics – footwork, grime, and the work of the …
British Studies May 5, 2022

Britain Alone

How a Decade of Conflict Remade the Nation

Liam Stanley

Hosted by Lia Paradis
In his new and fascinating book, Britain Alone: How a Decade of Conflict Remade the Nation (Manchester UP, 2022), Dr. Liam Stanley explores how, over the past decade or so …
German Studies May 4, 2022

Afropolitan Encounters

Literature and Activism in London and Berlin

Anna von Rath

Hosted by Nicole Coleman
Afropolitan Encounters: Literature and Activism in London and Berlin (Peter Lang, 2022), the first book in the new series “Imagining Black Europe,” explores what Afropolitanism does. Mobile people of African …
British Studies May 3, 2022

For King and Country

The British Monarchy and the First World War

Heather Jones

Hosted by Charles Coutinho
For King and Country: The British Monarchy and the First World War (Cambridge UP, 2021) is a ground-breaking history of the British monarchy in the First World War and of …
The Future of . . . with Owen Bennett-Jones May 3, 2022

The Future of Statues

A Conversation with Alex Von Tunzelmann

Alex Von Tunzelmann

Hosted by Owen Bennett-Jones
What are the rights and wrongs of toppling statues? Sometimes everyone agrees it’s a good idea. After the second world war, for example, the defeat of fascism meant that all …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast May 2, 2022

The Wordhord

Daily Life in Old English

Hana Videen

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Old English is the language you think you know until you actually hear or see it. Unlike Shakespearean English or even Chaucer’s Middle English, Old English—the language of Beowulf—defies comprehension …
General History April 25, 2022

Wales, the Welsh and the Making of America

Vivienne Sanders

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
In Wales, the Welsh, and the Making of America (University of Wales Press, 2021), Vivienne Sanders writes the first systematic attempt to both recount and evaluate the considerable yet undervalued …
General History April 21, 2022

Down the Warpath to the Cedars

Indians' First Battles in the Revolution

Mark R. Anderson

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
In May 1776 more than two hundred Indian warriors descended the St. Lawrence River to attack Continental forces at the Cedars, west of Montreal. In just three days’ fighting, the …
Art April 20, 2022

The Invention of Norman Visual Culture

Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition

Lisa Reilly

Hosted by Tanja Tolar
In The Invention of Norman Visual Culture: Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition (Cambridge UP, 2020), Lisa Reilly establishes a new interpretive paradigm for the eleventh and twelfth-century art and architecture …
German Studies April 20, 2022

German Social Democracy through British Eyes

A Documentary History, 1870–1914

James Retallack

Hosted by Lea Greenberg
On the eve of the First World War, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the largest and most powerful socialist party in the world. German Social Democracy through British …
Philosophy April 20, 2022

Language, Limits, and Beyond

Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore

Priyambada Sarkar

Hosted by Malcolm Keating
What does a Bengali intellectual and poet have in common with a British-Austrian logician and philosopher? In Language, Limits, and Beyond: Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore (Oxford University Press, 2021) …
General History April 19, 2022

Churchill's Shadow

The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Hosted by Charles Coutinho
Sir Winston Spencer-Churchill is generally considered one of the greatest statesman of the twentieth century, if not the greatest of all, revered for his opposition to appeasement, his defiance in …
British Studies April 19, 2022

The Culture of Male Beauty in Britain

From the First Photographs to David Beckham

Paul R. Deslandes

Hosted by Manamee Guha
Spanning the decades from the rise of photography to the age of the selfie, The Culture of Male Beauty in Britain: From the First Photographs to David Beckham (University of Chicago Press …
British Studies April 19, 2022

Freedom Seekers

Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London

Simon Peter Newman

Hosted by Grant Kleiser
Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London (University of London Press, 2022) by Professor Simon P. Newman reveals the hidden stories of enslaved and bound people who attempted to escape …
South Asian Studies April 12, 2022

Rebels Against the Raj

Western Fighters for India's Freedom

Ramachandra Guha

Hosted by Shatrunjay Mall
Rebels Against the Raj: Western Fighters for India’s Freedom (Knopf, 2022) by Ramachandra Guha tells the extraordinary but little-known story of seven individuals, foreigners to India, who chose to struggle …