New Books in British Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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1651
Donald H. Akenson, “Exporting the Rapture: John...
Don Akenson, who is Douglas Professor of Canadian and Colonial History at Queen’s University, Ontario, is one of the most eminent scholars of Irish history. Exporting the Rapture: John Nelson Darby and the Victorian Conquest of North American Evangelic...
34 min
1652
Robert G. Ingram, “Reformation Without End: Rel...
Robert G. Ingram’s Reformation Without End: Religion, Politics and the Past in Post-Revolutionary England (Manchester University Press, 2018) radically reinterprets the English Reformation. Subjects in eighteenth-century England didn’t know they were l...
40 min
1653
Roland Philipps, “A Spy Named Orphan: the Enigm...
Donald Maclean was one of the most treacherous and productive – for Moscow spies of the Cold War era and a key member of the infamous “Cambridge Five” spy ring, yet the complete extent of this shy, intelligent,
58 min
1654
Gill Bennett, “The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspir...
The Zinoviev Affair is a story of one of the most long-lasting and enduring conspiracy theories in modern British politics, an intrigue that still resonates nearly one-hundred years after it was written. Almost certainly a forgery,
51 min
1655
Jeffrey Kahan, “Shakespeare and Superheroes” (A...
What do Shakespeare and superheroes have in common? A penchant for lycra and capes? A flair for the dramatic? Well, according to Shakespeare scholar, English Professor and comic-book fan Jeffrey Kahan, the connection between Batman and the Bard runs mu...
63 min
1656
Nathaniel Philbrick, “In the Hurricane’s Eye: T...
Most Americans do not appreciate the extent to which victory in the American Revolution was due to the leadership of a French aristocrat. As Nathaniel Philbrick demonstrates in his new book In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and th...
45 min
1657
Stephanie L. Derrick, “The Fame of C. S. Lewis:...
C. S. Lewis remains one of the most popular religious writers, and one of the most widely discussed children’s writers. I had the chance to catch up with Stephanie L. Derrick about her new book, The Fame of C. S.
34 min
1658
Charlotte Greenhalgh, “Aging in Twentieth-Centu...
What role did elderly Britons have in shaping the twentieth-century welfare state? In her new book, Aging in Twentieth-Century Britain (University of California Press, 2018), Charlotte Greenhalgh offers a compelling portrait of a segment of Britain’s t...
44 min
1659
B. P. Owensby and R. J. Ross, “Justice in a Ne...
Justice in a New World: Negotiating Legal Intelligibility in British, Iberian, and Indigenous America (New York University Press, 2018), edited by Brian P. Owensby and Richard J. Ross, examines the conflict and interplay between settler and indigenous ...
76 min
1660
Stephen R. Platt, “Imperial Twilight: The Opium...
The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” trade beyond the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and continue dealing in the lucrative commodity, opium.
59 min
1661
Nick Hubble, “The Proletarian Answer to the Mod...
Nick Hubble’s The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) is a thrilling, and timely challenge to the orthodoxy that proletarian and high-modernist literatures ought to be understood in opposition to one another....
85 min
1662
William Anthony Hay, “Lord Liverpool: A Politic...
If Lord Derby was the ‘forgotten Prime Minister’ and Andrew Bonar-Law was the ‘Unknown Prime Minister’ then Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770-1828), 2nd Earl of Liverpool, who was Britain’s longest serving prime minister since William Pitt the Younger,
70 min
1663
Sir John Elliott, “Scots and Catalans: Union an...
Sir John Elliott, Regius Professor Emeritus of Modern History at Oxford University, one of the premier historians writing in English on Spanish and European History in the Early Modern period, has now delighted his many ardent readers and admirers by w...
56 min
1664
Jeremy Martens, “Empire and Asian Migration: So...
In his new book, Empire and Asian Migration: Sovereignty, Immigration Restriction and Protest in the British Settler Colonies, 1888–1907 (UWA Publishing, 2018), Jeremy Martens, a senior lecturer in History at the University of Western Australia,
14 min
1665
Stephen Lee Naish, “Riffs & Meaning: Manic Stre...
In Riffs & Meaning: Manic Street Preachers and Know Your Enemy (Headpress, 2018), Stephen Lee Naish tells the story of Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers’ 2001 album Know Your Enemy. The record’s engagement with diverse and unexpected musical influ...
4 min
1666
Megan Ward, “Seeming Human: Artificial Intellig...
Artificial intelligence and Victorian literature: these two notions seem incompatible. AI brings us to the age of information and technology, whereas Victorian literature invites us to the world of lengthy novels, to the world of the written word.
33 min
1667
Charles Umney, “Class Matters: Inequality and E...
What is class? In Class Matters: Inequality and Exploitation in 21st-Century Britain (Pluto Press, 2018), Charles Umney, an Associate Professor in Work and Employment Relations at the University of Leeds, offers a new marxist analysis of the meaning an...
41 min
1668
Rupali Mishra, “A Business of State: Commerce, ...
Though today the public and private sectors are treated as distinct if not separate, the situation was quite different in early modern England. Back then the two were often intertwined, with one of the best examples of this being the English East India...
58 min
1669
Jim Clifford, “West Ham and the River Lea: A So...
In West Ham and the River Lea: A Social and Environmental History of London’s Industrialized Marshlands, 1839-1914 (University of British Columbia Press, 2017), Jim Clifford brings together histories of water and river systems, urban history,
75 min
1670
Irina Dumitrescu, “The Experience of Education ...
A sharply observed study of the representations of education found in Anglo-Saxon texts, Irina Dumitrescu’s The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Cambridge University Press 2018) invites readers to recognize just how often educational ...
50 min
1671
Joanna M. Williams, “Manchester’s Radical Mayor...
Today, the Neo-Gothic Manchester Town Hall stands as one of the notable architectural features of England’s second city. It also serves, however, as a towering monument to the career of Abel Heywood, a businessman and politician who, as Joanna M.
62 min
1672
David Edgerton, “The Rise and Fall of the Briti...
David Edgerton’s The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth Century History (Allen Lane, 2018) argues the United Kingdom had a distinctive national moment characterized by a strong state, powerful military armed with advanced weapons,
59 min
1673
Elizabeth M. Sanders, “Genres of Doubt: Science...
The Victorians left an indelible stamp on culture that continues to be in evidence today, not least of which is their refinement of the realist fiction medium known as the novel and their innovations, which led to the birth of fantasy and science ficti...
76 min
1674
Stacey Pierson, “Private Collecting, Exhibition...
In her latest book, Private Collecting, Exhibitions, and the Shaping of Art History in London: The Burlington Fine Arts Club (Routledge, 2017), Stacey J. Pierson reveals the fascinating history of one of the most refined and influential fine art clubs ...
42 min
1675
Steve R. Dunn, “Bayly’s War: The Battle for the...
Though Great Britain’s warships ruled the waves throughout the First World War, their greatest challenge came from just underneath them. Nowhere was this better demonstrated in the Western Approaches, where, as Steve R.
37 min