Contemporary Review articles from June 2007

Contemporary Review archives from June 2007

The end of Blair.(Tony Blair)
June 22, 2007... ON 27 June Tony Blair will climb into his heavily armoured limousine and be driven the short distance down the Mall to Buckingham Place where he will resign his seals of office to the Queen. It will be just a few weeks more than ten years since...

Scotland on the brink?(Scottish National Party's win at the Scottish Parliament elections)
June 22, 2007... 'SCOTLAND has changed for good and for ever', said the Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond after his party edged ahead of Labour in the elections for the Scottish Parliament on 3 May. 'Never again will we see the Labour Party assume...

Shakespeare, Marlowe and Blair.(Christopher Marlowe; Tony Blair)
June 22, 2007... TONY Blair will never settle into a distinct Shakespearean role. He is an actor, who moves from one part to another. As I write, The Times compares him with Macbeth, as Birnam Wood starts moving in the general direction of Dunsinane: the news...

Mugabe: the last of Africa's 'Big Men'?(Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe)
June 22, 2007... ROBERT Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, is over eighty years old. In the 'first world' a person of this age would have long had their bus pass allowing them free travel on city buses. They would have been in receipt of a state pension for...

A fresh look at Budapest's Holocaust.(The Battle for Budapest)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... GENERATIONS of children in a northern suburb of this magnificent capital city on the Danube were taught in school that their beloved Apollo cinema had been hit by British bombers during the Second World War. Today, the imposing building in the...

Cyprus--the geo-strategic dimension.
June 22, 2007... The Cyprus problem is not going to disappear. For the present it is on hold, with a UN solution not in sight, though the EU hopes a solution will somehow emerge over the next three years. Professor Clement Dodd, Update on the Cyprus...

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus Revisited.(author Lawrence Durrell's home)
June 22, 2007... 'IT seemed in that warm honey-gold afternoon a delectable island in which to spend some years of one's life', mused the writer Lawrence Durrell, having just bought a house in Bellapais, a village about five miles up in the hills above Kyrenia....

American images in today's France.
June 22, 2007... A well-worn shibboleth still much alive, and now wrong-headed, has it that France is inveterately anti-American; when, in fact, the country for the most part has never been more pro-American, or certainly in the forty years or so since I began...

Travel--not the same as in yesteryear!
June 22, 2007... WHEN I sit and reflect on how travel has changed through the years, I go back to my own experiences, and these have been extensive. They span most of the twentieth century. During the Second World War and since, I have travelled to some one...

Schooling and learning difficulties in China.
June 22, 2007... SINCE the communist proclamation of the Peoples Republic in 1949 modern China has wrestled, quite successfully, with the problems of mass illiteracy and ignorance. A dictionary published in 1959 contained 49,965 characters, while in 1986 a...

The sources of Pakistan's insecurity.
June 22, 2007... PAKISTAN today is at critical crossroads and many crucial issues that will determine the future of Pakistan have come to the fore. Forty persons were killed and over 200 others were injured in different parts of Karachi on 12 May, when the...

Kashmir.(sovereignty)
June 22, 2007... THE part of the world now known as Jammu and Kashmir is a legendarily beautiful mountainous region of some seven million people located where the borders of India, Pakistan and China meet. It is dominated by the Himalayan mountains which rise...

The prime of Lucas Cranach.(Brief biography)
June 22, 2007... A small exhibition of major importance is taking place from 21 June to 23 September at the Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House, London: Temptation in Eden. It is not a comprehensive assemblage of Cranach's works, such as that of 1974, when...

Politics and globalisation.('Globalization and Politics: Promises and Dangers')(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Globalization and Politics: Promises and Dangers. Jan-Erik Lane. Ashgate. [pounds sterling]30.00. xiv + 253 pages. ISBN 0-7546-4667-X. This is a book of information, prescriptions and admonitions. According to its author, a professor in the...

The Monarchy and Mr Paxman.('On Royalty')(Book review)
June 22, 2007... On Royalty. Jeremy Paxman. Viking. [pounds sterling]20.00. v + 370 pages. ISBN 0-670-91662-5. For readers within the United Kingdom the author needs no introduction. For those overseas, his name might not resonate. Mr Paxman is one of BBC...

A censorious look at dixie.(Away down South: A History of Southern Identity)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity. James C. Cobb. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]17.99. x + 404 pages. ISBN 0-19-508959-6. The photograph on the dust-jacket suggests that James C. Cobb, the B. Phinizy Spalding...

England through French eyes.('Touche: A Frenchwoman's Take on the English')(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Touche: A Frenchwoman's Take on the English. Agnes Catherine Poirier. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [pounds sterling]9.99 pb. xii + 164 pages. ISBN 0-297-85234-6. In 2005, Agnes Catherine Poirier, a Parisian-born journalist and film critic, who...

The 1984-85 miners' strike--and after.('When Arthur Met Maggie')(Book review)
June 22, 2007... When Arthur Met Maggie. Patrick Hannan. Seren. [pounds sterling]9.99 p.b. 196 pages. ISBN 1-85411-422-0. Every success, wrote the Nobel-prize-winning novelist, Hermann Hesse, contains the seeds of failure. Similarly, every failure contains...

America since the sixties.(Altered States: America since the Sixties)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Altered States: America since the Sixties. Jeremy Black. Reaktion Books. [pounds sterling]14.95. vi + 243 pages. ISBN 1-86189-288-8. This is a balanced and comprehensive introduction to modern America, replete with eye-catching statistics:...

Computing the Enigma of Alan Turing.(The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer. David Leavitt. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [pounds sterling]16.99. 319 pages. ISBN 13-978-0-297-84655-0. The English mathematician, Alan Turing, laid the foundations of...

Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Joan Littlewood. Nadine Holdsworth. Routledge. [pounds sterling]55.00. 168 pages. ISBN 0-415-33886-7. David Edgar has spoken recently of Joan Littlewood as a 'maverick'. The term is rarely used as a compliment. The suggestion is that Joan...

Anti-popery in Victorian England.(The Old Enemies: Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Old Enemies: Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture. Michael Wheeler. Cambridge: University Press. [pounds sterling]45.00 (US$80.00). xv + 352 pages. ISBN 0-521-82810-4. Catholics and Protestants have been enemies...

Shakespeare and his friends.(Shakespeare and Co. Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Shakespeare and Co. Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story. Stanley Wells. Allen Lane. [pounds sterling]25.00. xv + 286 pages. ISBN 0-713-99773-7. For Private Eye,...

New and noteworthy.(classic texts; collections)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... This column will be devoted to new editions of classic texts and collected letters, the first of which comes from HARPERCOLLINS. It is the third and final volume of C.S. Lewis Collected Letters. Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950-1963...

The world of paperbacks.
June 22, 2007... We begin this quarter's column with new titles from OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, the first of which is John Blair's The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society ([pounds sterling]19.99), an impressive study of the English church before the Norman Conquest...

If Love Were All ... The Story of Frances Stevenson and David Lloyd George.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... If Love Were All... The Story of Frances Stevenson and David Lloyd George. John Campbell. Jonathan Cape. [pounds sterling]25.00. xvi + 557 pages. ISBN 0-224-07464-4. Mr Campbell, who specialises in political biographies, here turns to the...

Mayflower: A Voyage to War.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Mayflower: A Voyage to War. Nathaniel Philbrick. HarperPress. [pounds sterling]20.00. xvii + 461 pages. ISBN 0-00-715127-6. This title, originally published in the U.S. by Penguin, takes a new look at the 'pilgrim fathers', their 1620 voyage...

The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus. Carolyn Dewald and John Marin-cola, editors. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]45.00 (US $75.00). xxii + 378 pages. ISBN 0-521-83001-X. This collection of twenty essays by a team of...

Relish: The Extraordinary Life of Alexis Soyer, Victorian Celebrity Chef.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Relish: The Extraordinary Life of Alexis Soyer, Victorian Celebrity Chef. Ruth Cowen. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [pounds sterling]18.99. ix + 342 pages. ISBN 0-297-64562-5. Soyer was the first of that rather tiresome bunch, the publicity-seeking...

The English Civil War: A People's History.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The English Civil War: A People's History. Diane Purkiss. HarperPress. [pounds sterling]25.00. xxiii + 627 pages. ISBN 0-00-715061-X. While one may dispute the author's assertion that the Civil War was 'the most important event in our history'...

A Very British Family: The Trevelyans and Their World.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... A Very British Family: The Trevelyans and Their World. Laura Trevelyan. I.B. Tauris. [pounds sterling]18.99. viii + 264 pages. ISBN 1-86064-946-7. Of the various intellectual families that dominated the nineteenth century, the Trevelyans were...

Medieval Schools from Roman Britain to Renaissance England.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Medieval Schools from Roman Britain to Renaissance England. Nicholas Orme. Yale University Press. [pounds sterling]25.00. xvi + 430 pages. ISBN 0-300-11102-9. This marvellous study is, the author writes, a sequel to his Medieval Children...

Passionate Minds: The Great Enlightenment Love Affair.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Passionate Minds: The Great Enlightenment Love Affair. David Bodanis. Little Brown. [pounds sterling]17.99. xxiii + 312 pages. ISBN 0-316-73087-4. This is the story of Emile du Chatelet, Voltaire's lover (for a while) and a highly skilled...

Victory of the West: The Story of the Battle of Lepanto.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Victory of the West: The Story of the Battle of Lepanto. Niccolo Capponi. Macmillan. [pounds sterling]20.00. xxxvi + 412 pages. ISBN 1-4050-4588-4. In 1571, Christian naval forces defeated the Ottoman fleet in the largest sea battle ever seen....

Berlin Games: How Hitler Stole the Olympic Dream.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Berlin Games: How Hitler Stole the Olympic Dream. Guy Walters. John Murray. [pounds sterling]20.00. xv + 68 pages. ISBN 0-7195-6783-1. The games of 1936 are unique in the history of the Olympics because they were the only ones staged by a...

The Complete Greek Temples.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Complete Greek Temples. Tony Spawforth. Thames & Hudson. [pounds sterling]24.95. 240 pages. ISBN 0-500-05142-9. By the skilful blending of photographs (over 400 of which 130 are in colour), diagrams, plans, maps and charts, Prof. Spawforth...

The Cambridge Companion to Keynes.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Cambridge Companion to Keynes. Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman, editors. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]40.00 (US $70). xiv + 327 pages. ISBN 0-521-84090-2. Keynes remains the most famous economist of the twentieth...

Oliver Cromwell.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Oliver Cromwell. Martyn Bennett. Routledge. [pounds sterling]45.00. xiv + 299 pages. ISBN 0-415-31921-8. Part of the author's aim in this, his first biography, is to separate out myth from fact in Cromwell's life and to show how difficult it is...

Brothers in War.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Brothers in War. Michael Walsh. Ebury Press. [pounds sterling]16.99. v + 426 pages. ISBN 0-0919088-3. This book sets out to put a human face on the tragedy that was the Great War. The author has had access to a large collection of letters and...

The Jesus Inquest.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Jesus Inquest. Charles Foster. Monarch Books. [pounds sterling]8.99 p.b. 298 pages. ISBN 978-0-8254-6105-7. The author of this book is a barrister who was originally trained in medicine. He also sits as a Recorder. All these factors are...

British Political Thought in History, Literature and Theory, 1500-1800.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... British Political Thought in History, Literature and Theory, 1500-1800. David Armitage, editor. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]50.00 (US$90.00). xi + 326 pages. ISBN 978-0-521-87041-2. The bulk of the thirteen essays in this...

Twelve Days: Revolution 1956: How the Hungarians Tried to Topple their Soviet Masters.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Twelve Days: Revolution 1956: How the Hungarians Tried to Topple their Soviet Masters. Victor Sebestyen. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [pounds sterling]20.00. xxvii + 340 pages. ISBN 0-297-84731-7. No one who lived through the momentous days described...

An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC-AD 409.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC-AD 409. David Mattingly. Allen Lane. [pounds sterling]30.00. xvi + 622 pages. ISBN 0-713-99063-5. This volume in the Penguin History of Britain aims to be 'controversial' in a field...

Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany. Jonathan Petropoulos. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]20.00. xx + 524 pages. ISBN 0-19-920377-6. This study, which originated with O.U.P New York, looks at those Princes...

Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy. G.E.M. de Ste. Croix. Michael Whitby and Joseph Streeter, editors. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]60.00. xii + 394 pages. ISBN 0-19-927812-1. On Geoffrey de Ste. Croix's death in 2000...

Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain. Peter Mandler, editor. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]55.00. xi + 254 pages. ISBN 0-19-927133-X. This collection of nine essays by a team of Anglo-American academic historians, is...

Waxing Mythical: The Life and Legend of Madame Tussaud.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Waxing Mythical: The Life and Legend of Madame Tussaud. Kate Berridge. John Murray. [pounds sterling]25.00. xiii + 352 pages. ISBN 0-7195-6551-0. This biography sets out to rescue Marie Tussaud from her reputation as nothing more than a...

The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450-1642.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450-1642. Alan Cromartie. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]48.00 (US$90.00). x + 309 pages. ISBN 0-521-78269-4. This volume in the 'Ideas in Context' series is...

Behind the Counter: Shop Lives from Market Stall to Supermarket.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Behind the Counter: Shop Lives from Market Stall to Supermarket. Pamela Horn. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]20.00. xxviii + 292 pages. ISBN 0-7509-3930-3. Pamela Horn has earned a reputation as a leading social historian and here turns...

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Other Writings.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Other Writings. David Hume. Stephen Buckle, editor. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]30.00 (US$50.00). xli + 232 pages. ISBN 978-0-521-60403-1. The Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding...

Lionheart and Lackland: King Richard, King John and the Wars of Conquest.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Lionheart and Lackland: King Richard, King John and the Wars of Conquest. Frank McLynn. Jonathan Cape. [pounds sterling]20.00. xii + 578 pages. ISBN 0-224-06244-1. This is a nicely written 'dual biography' of two of the most famous sovereigns...

Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs: Central Europe c. 1683-1867.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs: Central Europe c. 1683-1867. R.J.W. Evans. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]55.00. xix + 337 pages. ISBN 0-19-928144-0. In this collection, Prof. Evans, the author of The Making of the Habsburg...

Battlefield: Decisive Conflicts in History.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Battlefield: Decisive Conflicts in History. Richard Holmes and Martin Marix Evans, editors. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]17.99. viii + 376 pages. ISBN 0-19-280653-X. This collection is distilled from The Oxford Companion to...

The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey. Charles Hefling and Cynthia Shattuck, editors. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]26.99. xvi + 614 pages. ISBN 0-19-529756-3. This impressive reference work, which...

White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties. Dominic Sandbrook. Little, Brown. [pounds sterling]22.50. xviii + 878 pages. ISBN 0-316-72452-1. This volume completes the history begun in Never Had It So Good and covers the years,...

How the West was Lost.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... How the West was Lost. Alexander Boot. I.B. Tauris. [pounds sterling]24.50. xvi + 351 pages. ISBN 1-85043-985-0. In this highly perceptive and challenging study of our contemporary cultural identity, Mr Boot, who was lucky enough to get out of...

Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy: A Casebook.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy: A Casebook. Thomas Keymer, editor. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]45.00. x + 264 pages. ISBN 0-19-517560-3. This latest title in the Casebooks in Criticism is devoted to Sterne's 'relentlessly...

Champagne and Shambles: The Arkwrights and the Downfall of the Landed Aristocracy.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Champagne and Shambles: The Arkwrights and the Downfall of the Landed Aristocracy. Catherine Beale. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]20.00. xv + 302 pages. ISBN 0-7509-4392-0. This is the intriguing story of the great agricultural decline of...

Paris: The Secret History.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Paris: The Secret History. Andrew Hussey. Viking. [pounds sterling]20.00. xxiv + 485 pages. ISBN 0-670-91364-2. 'Secret' histories are what the author (or publisher) wants them to be. In this history of the French capital, the adjective means a...

Early Modern Genealogy: Researching Your Family History 1600-1838.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Early Modern Genealogy: Researching Your Family History 1600-1838. Paul Chambers. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]25.00. xii + 275 pages. ISBN 0-7509-3688-6. This volume may be considered a continuation of the author's Medieval Genealogy....

Sicily: Through Writers' Eyes.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Sicily: Through Writers' Eyes. Horatio Clare. Elland. [pounds sterling]12.99. x + 309 pages. ISBN 0-907871-94-1. The aim of this collection of descriptions of Sicily and Sicilian life is to give readers a 'selection of writings from and about...

Seminary Boy.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Seminary Boy. John Cornwell. Fourth Estate. [pounds sterling]15.99. ix + 339 pages. ISBN 0-00-723243-8. The author, a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, has a reputation as an historian critical, to say the least, of the Catholic Church. In...

The Last Revolution: 1688 and the Creation of the Modern World.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Last Revolution: 1688 and the Creation of the Modern World. Patrick Dillon. Jonathan Cape. [pounds sterling]20.00. xiv + 450 pages. ISBN 0-224-07195-5. Mr Dillon divides his history into two parts. The first part starts with the Coronation...

'How To Read' series.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Granta Books have recently brought out another five titles in their 'How To Read' series: Beauvoir by Stella Sandford, Sartre by Robert Bernasconi, Jung by David Tacey, Lacan by Slavoj Zizek, and The Bible by the Rt Rev Richard Holloway. All...

James VI and I: Ideas, Authority, and Government.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... James VI and I: Ideas, Authority, and Government. Ralph Houlbrooke, editor. Ashgate. [pounds sterling]55.00. xiii+198 pages. ISBN 0-7546-5410-9. The place of James I in history continues to undergo extensive renovation, not to say...

Hitler's Olympics: The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Hitler's Olympics: The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Christopher Hilton. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]20.00. xii + 244 pages. ISBN 0-7509-4292-4. This history of the famous games in the Nazi capital makes use not only of official German...

Europe East and West.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Europe East and West. Norman Davies. Jonathan Cape. [pounds sterling]20.00. xiv + 336 pages. ISBN 0-224-06924-3. This volume contains a selection of Prof. Davies' writings on European history, and more specifically, on eastern European nations...

In a Free Republic: Life in Cromwell's England.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... In a Free Republic: Life in Cromwell's England. Alison Plowden. [pounds sterling]20.00. xiv + 225 pages. ISBN 0-7509-1883-7. Miss Plowden, who has made a reputation for herself as a biographer and historian of the sixteenth century, here turns...

Forgotten Voices of the Great War.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Forgotten Voices of the Great War. Max Arthur. Ebury Press. [pounds sterling]12.99. 160 pages. ISBN 0-09191227-X. This title, when first published in 2002, became a huge success because the author made extensive use of the thousands of hours of...

Charles Dickens and His Performing Selves: Dickens and the Public Readings.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Charles Dickens and His Performing Selves: Dickens and the Public Readings. Malcolm Andrews. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]40.00. xiv + 331 pages. ISBN 0-19-927069-4. Dickens' rank as a mega-star was as much due to his readings as...

Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson. Richard Davenport-Hines, editor. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [pounds sterling]20.00. xliii + 326 pages. ISBN 0-297-85084-9. This correspondence began in 1947, after the young Trevor-Roper,...

The Isle of Wight.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Isle of Wight. David W. Lloyd and Nikolaus Pevsner. Yale University Press. [pounds sterling]19.95. xix + 348 pages. ISBN 078-0-300-10733-1. Pevsner's Hampshire and the Isle of Wight was published in 1967 and this new edition, confined to...

The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions. R.A.W. Rhodes, Sarah A. Binder and Bert A. Rockman, editors. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]85.00. xvii + 816 pages. ISBN 0-19-927569-6. This Handbook is made up of thirty-eight essays...

Islamic Finance: Law, Economics, and Practice.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Islamic Finance: Law, Economics, and Practice. Mahmoud A. El-Gamal. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]40.00 (US$60.00). xvii + 221 pages. ISBN 0-521-86414-3. Prof. El-Gamal's aim is to provide 'a qualitative overview of the practice...

Biblical Religion and the Novel, 1700-2000.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Biblical Religion and the Novel, 1700-2000. Mark Knight and Thomas Woodman, editors. Ashgate. [pounds sterling]45.00. ix + 170 pages. ISBN 0-7546-5117-7. The eleven essays in this collection, excluding the introduction, are concerned with...

The Culture of the Europeans from 1800 to the Present.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Culture of the Europeans from 1800 to the Present. Donald Sassoon. HarperPress. [pounds sterling]30.00. xxviii + 1617 pages. ISBN 0-00-255879-3. This large survey, concentrating on Britain and Europe, seeks to describe 'the extraordinary...

Orwell in Tribune: 'As I Please' and Other Writings 1943-7.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Orwell in Tribune: 'As I Please' and Other Writings 1943-7. Paul Anderson, editor. Politico's. [pounds sterling]19.99. ix + 401 pages. ISBN 1-84275-155-8. This is the first collection of Orwell's pieces for Tribune written during some of his...

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. Andrew Roberts. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [pounds sterling]25.00. xiii + 736 pages. ISBN 0-297-85076-8. The author insists this is not 'a comprehensive history' but a series of 'snapshots taken...

Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick. Jenny Uglow. Faber and Faber. [pounds sterling]20.00. xix + 458 pages. ISBN 0-571-22374-5. Woodcut illustrations are now regarded as somewhat quaint and charming but in their heyday, before the...