FROM ISSUE 7 SPRING 2020
When it comes to women's fashion, is the Age of Revelation over?
For more than a century, fashion designers
sought to reveal the female body, on the basis that clothes were constraining, politically as well as physically, and that women demanded freedom from all the social conventions and prudery that had once kept them hidden and enslaved.
But now, stylists are once again designing clothes that cover up the body, and their creations are being welcomed by various important and hitherto overlooked demographic groups.
What's going on? Is this politics or something else? Hafsa Lodi, a law graduate from SOAS and a fashion enthusiast, examines the question in her book Modesty: A Fashion Paradox, available at a discount from our online bookshop.
Hear Hafsa Lodi read an excerpt from her book on the Booklaunch YouTube channel.
FROM ISSUE 7 SPRING 2020
People were locked down at home, kept thinking they were safe when the mortality rates dropped, and quickly guessed that they were being lied to by the authorities. We're talking about the coronavirus pandemic, right?
Wrong. Some 355 years before covid-19, London suffered from the last outbreak of the plague, otherwise known as the Black Death, that had devastated the world for the previous 300 years.
Although the biology of the infection was different, the parallels with today are extraordinary and terrifying.
How Daniel Defoe could write about it with such precision is a mystery: he was only 5 when the plague struck in 1665 and didn't publish his Journal until 1722. However he did it, this is a case study in great documentary journalism.
Hear Stephen Games read from Defoe's book on the Booklaunch YouTube channel.
FROM ISSUE 6 WINTER 2020
Why do we humiliate the poor for being poor?
People tend to treat the poor as if their poverty is their own fault—as if the conditions of disempowerment that we entrap them in are in reality the product of their own ineptitude or bad life decisions.
Accusations like that not only rob people of rights and opportunities, they're also deeply hurtful.
Mary O'Hara is an award-winning journalist and author specialising in social policy and social justice. She was inspired to write about these issues in part because of her experience of childhood poverty growing up in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
In her new book, The Shame Game, she asks how attitudes of blame and condescension that perpetuate inequality and social division can be overturned.
Hear Mary O'Hara read from her book on the Booklaunch YouTube channel.
ISSUE 4 SUMMER 2019
2 Phineas Foster | The London Yoot Bible
3 Stephen Games | Moving London north
4 Trevor Pateman | Philosophical bites
5 Antonio Spilimbergo and Krishnan
Srinivasan | Brazil’s chances of recovery
6 Naguib Mahfouz | Egyptian stories
7 Peter and Susan Barrett | Greece in the
1960s
8 Lynne Pettinger | Workplace problems
9 Steven King | Archives of English
poverty
10 Paul and Julie Knoepfler | Building a
living dragon
11 20th Century Society | 100 churches
12 Keith Kahn-Harris | Antisemitism and
racism
13 Peta Tait | Victorian animal abuse
14 Claudy Op den Kamp and Dan Hunter
50 examples of intellectual property
15 Vivien Whelpton | Richard Aldington
16 Susan Barrett | Novel set in wartime
Greece
17 Linda Lo Scuro | Novel set in Sicily
18 Stan L. Abbott | Novel about psychosis
19 Carla Gagliardi | Novel set in Italy
ISSUE 1 AUTUMN 2018
4 Eddie Thomas Pedersen | Danish novel
5 Helena Rosenblatt | A history of
liberalism
6 Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei Schleifer
Investor psychology
7 Royal Academy | Klimt and Schiele
8 Michael Rosen | Socialist fairy tales
9 Jonathan Edwards | Gen (new Welsh
poetry)
10 Nolen Getz | Nihilism and technology
11 Ian Shircore | Clive James’s songs
12 Kenneth Powell | Arup Associates’
architecture
14 David Gladstone | British diplomat's
memoir of Sri Lanka
15 Peter Hain | Nelson Mandela biography
16 Catherine McIlwaine | Tolkien's
drawings
17 Dermot Turing | Breaking ‘Enigma’
18 Stefan Muthesius and Miles Glendinning
High-rise public housing
19 Chris Honor | Chriskitch cookbook
20 Robert Best | English modern design
21 Stephen Games | Cat language
21 Anon | The memories of an estate agent
ISSUE 8 SUMMER 2020
2 Editorial | The dangers of binarism
3 Philip Seargeant | How politicians
construct their lies
4 Athena Aktipis | The evolution of the
cancer cell
6 Kevin Hand | Looking for alien life
7 Rowland Wynne | Evan James
Williams: atomic physicist
8 Brigitte Benkemoun | Artists in Paris
9 Ashmolean Museum | The making of
Young Rembrandt
10 Caspar Melville | London's music scene
11 Yunis Alam | Cars and the Muslim street
12 Ashmolean Museum | Wood engraving
14 Michael Waterhouse | Novel about
soldier on active service in Afghanistan
15 Trevor Pateman | Policy on statues
16 Neil Wilkie | Reigniting love in
failing relationships
17 Russell Meagher | Novel about the
impact of sudden wealth
18 Booklaunch | How to design a book
cover
FROM ISSUE 7 SPRING 2020
Two conflicting charges have been laid against the judiciary in recent years: that they act to block the will of the people or go beyond their remit to try and shape it. Do they?
Late in 2019 judges prevented the British prime minister's proroguing of parliament by deciding that no such proroguing had taken place.
Their decision was one of several that outraged some politicians and their constituents, as well as parts of the media that habitually accuse judges of intervening in politics to achieve outcomes that are either too left wing or too right wing.
Joshua Rozenberg, presenter of the BBC's "Law in Action", weighs up the evidence in his book Enemies of the People?, the title of which came from a dramatic headline in the Daily Mail.
Hear Joshua Rozenberg read from his book on the Booklaunch YouTube channel.
ISSUE 6 WINTER 2020
3 David Nutt | Bringing realism to
government policy on drugs
4 Ian Thewlis | Arabian Night Patrol
5 Simon Quail | A life in merchant
shipping
6 Christopher Maycock | Overland to
India in 1963—with Lady Betjeman
7 Tim Symonds | A new Sherlock Holmes
mystery
8 Mary O'Hara | Learning how not to
shame the poor
9 Barry Cohen | Poland’s hidden Jews
10 Scott Hames | Scottish literary
nationalism
12 Rob Liddiard and David Sims
East Anglian WW2 archaeology
14 R. Gareth Wyn Jones | Energy
15 Booklaunch | Literary art for sale
16 Era Dabla-Norris | Interwar sovereign
debt in six countries
18 Ong Boon Hwee and Mark Goyder
Creating a responsible capitalism
19 Brian D Earp and Julian Savulescu
Using drugs to mend relationships
ISSUE 3 SPRING 2019
3 Simon May | The culture of "cute"
4 Ruth Pavey | Buying a wood in
Somerset
5 Summer Brennan | Women and high
heels
6 Brian Hiatt | Bruce Springsteen
7 Duane Tudahl | Prince and Purple Rain
8 Robert Best | English modern design
9 Richard Hollis | Henry van de Velde
10 Marie Bader | Love in Nazi Prague
11 Jonathan Fennell | Commonwealth
armies in WW2
12 Emma Stibbon | Art in fire and ice
13 Trevor Pateman | The author's voice
14 Stephen Games | A non-linear Bible
15 Tim Mackintosh-Smith | The Arabs
16 Theodor W. Adorno and Max
Horkheimer | A new manifesto
17 Justin E.H. Smith | A history of
irrationality
18 Rosemary Kidman Cox (ed) | Wildlife
photography
19 John Betjeman | English hymns
20 Julie Hankey | A family memoir
22 Chris Hilton | A love affair in Cuba
FROM ISSUE 7 SPRING 2020
Have you ever had difficulty telling Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump apart?
No? You may not have spent as much time with Labour Party activists as Dimitri Batrouni.
Dr Batrouni is a councillor, has worked in Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, helped in the US presidential campaigns of 2008 and 2012, and now teaches public policy at the University of Bristol.
In the last chapters of his new book, he looks at how senior figures in the Labour Party discussed policy ideas under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, and reveals surprising parallels—always denied by Corbyn—between Corbyn's stances and those promoted by Donald Trump.
The book is the product of extensive research within the Labour Party.
Hear Dimitri Batrouni read from his book on the Booklaunch YouTube channel.
ISSUE 7 SPRING 2020
2 Editorial | The coronavirus: could
anything good come of it?
3 Georg Cavallar | Kant and politics
4 Paul Lashmar | Spies and media spin
5 Joshua Rozenberg | Are judges biased?
6 Kalpana Kochhar, Sonali Jain-Chandra,
Monique Newiak | Third-world women
7 Alison Phipps | White feminism
8 Hafsa Lodi | Modesty in fashion
10 Deborah Sugg Ryan | Interwar design
11 Richard Griffiths | Conserving old
buildings
12 Michael Holman | Post-colonial Africa
13 Lonely Planet | Beauty spots with water
14 Jonathan Lawley | Extinction threat
15 Ibrahim Fraihat | Iran & Saudi Arabia
16 IMF | Nepal's economic recovery
17 Ahmet Yorulmaz | Turks in Crete
18 Dimitri Batrouni | Labour Party
policy issues
19 Thomas Nail | On re-reading Lucretius
20 Ramsey Campbell | Occult novel
21 Jonathan Newell | Weird horror
ISSUE 5 AUTUMN 2019
2 Phineas Foster | Poems for babies
3 Editorial | On our 1st anniversary
4 Jennifer Wallace | Tragedy since 9/11
5 Tucker Malarkey | Salmon extinction
6 Catherine Belsey | Literary ghosts
8 Glyn Ford | North Korea
9 Julian Cribb | Food or War
10 Paul Murphy | Autobiography
11 Alfred Schipke and others | Chinese
bonds
12 Penelope Hobhouse with Ambra
Edwards | A history of gardening
14 Kenneth Carter| Adrenalin addiction
15 Sam Wren-Lewis | The happiness
problem
16 Neil MacGregor | As others see us
17 Keith Carter | The Umbrella Men
(novel)
18 Lonely Planet | Top UK destinations
20 Trevor Pateman | Musings
21 Ian Shircore | Clive James’s lyrics
22 Patrick Kelly | Novel about love during
Northern Ireland's Troubles
23 Anita Mason | Political ghost story
ISSUE 2 WINTER 2019
3 François-Xavier Fauvelle | African
histories
4 Stefan Merrill Block | Oliver Loving
5 Gavriel D. Rosenfeld | Fears of Nazism
6 Celeste-Marie Bernier and Andrew
Taylor | The Frederick Douglass archive
8 Adrienne Mayor | Robots and gods
9 Thomas Kren | The Renaissance nude
10 Felipe Fernandez-Armesto | Human
history
11 Marilyn Hacker | Blazons (poetry)
11 Fawzi Karim | Incomprehensible lesson
(poetry)
12 Jay Prosser | Britain's Asian empire
14 Sean Seeger | Joyce and Walcott
15 David L. Hu | How animals move
16 Trevor Pateman | Essays
17 Michael and Stephen Farthing
Leonardo da Vinci and the human body
18 Brian Verity | Killing my wife
19 Kate Ashton | Eric Gill's lost legacy
20 Kirby Porter | A Northern Ireland
memoir
22 Karen Strang | Rimbaud in Scots dialect
23 Peter Archer | Science fiction comedy