Catching Nessie on Film
The Loch Ness Monster’s first appearance on film captured both the hype and the scepticism surrounding cinema’s newest star.
Britain
‘The Specter of the Archive’ by Nicholas Popper review
The Specter of the Archive: Political Practice and the Information State in Early Modern Britain by Nicholas Popper explores the Elizabethan revolution in record keeping.
‘Churchill’s American Network’ and ‘Mirrors of Greatness’ review
Cita Stelzer’s Churchill’s American Network and David Reynolds’ Mirrors of Greatness seek to bring Churchill’s contemporaries and adversaries out of his shadow.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin and the Making of Stars
What are stars made of? When a young astronomer upset standard explanations for the formation of the solar system, the establishment told her she was wrong – then stole her findings.
Petticoat Alley: London’s Forgotten Women’s Clubs
Despite their reputation, London’s private members’ clubs have never been entirely for men.
When Did Britain’s Age of Deference End – and Why?
An old-fashioned feature of a fusty, inegalitarian past, when did the British stop knowing their place?
‘Bluestockings’ by Susannah Gibson review
Bluestockings: The First Women’s Movement by Susannah Gibson makes a case for 18th-century proto-feminism. Do the Bluestockings fit?
‘Impossible Monsters’ by Michael Taylor review
Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science and Religion by Michael Taylor revels in the tangles of Victorian thought.
Spycraft and the Glorious Revolution
In the era of the early modern ‘secret state’, two notorious brothers set up an elaborate intelligence network, managing a vast array of spies and informers watchful for Jacobite plots against Britain.
Political Graffiti in Georgian Britain
The 18th century was the age of graffiti, when the writing on the wall turned political.