This is a guest post by Jonathan Gross, author of The European Byron Mobility, Cosmopolitanism, and Chameleon Although there have been many studies of Byron’s European impact, I consider the Eastern European reach of Byron. Mazepa, a painting by Vernet (‘Mazepa and the Wolves’, 1826), and another study, by a British painter John Frederick Herring, […]

This is an author interview by Dylan Motin, author of How Louis XIV Survived His Hegemonic Bid Q1. Why a book about Louis XIV and not any other king? Louis XIV’s France belonged in a rare category of states. Not only was it a great power but also what international relations scholars like to call […]

This is a guest post by Duncan McDuie-Ra, author of Insurgent Play: Social Worlds of Urban Disruption   Play is intrinsic to human existence and to some non-human animals too. We can think of play in different ways; as creative and destructive, as individual and collective, as production and consumption, as organised and spontaneous, as […]

This is a guest post by Lynette Reid, editor of Political Authority: Contract and Critique   I was a student (along with Olli Lagerspetz and others) of the British philosopher Peter Winch (1926–1997) in the last years of his life – the 1990s in Illinois. This was an era when American universities benefited from the […]

The Fashion Auteurs is an important, fresh and exciting book series dedicated to fashion designers who have made a lasting impact on fashion history. Written by experts in the field, these concise titles explore the unique contributions of each designer, placing them in the context of their times and peers, gauging their influence on the […]

This is a guest post by Glenn Fosbraey, author of Reading Song Lyrics: An Interdisciplinary and Multimodal Approach In today’s world, where streaming services allow us instant access to pretty much every song ever recorded, I like to keep certain ‘hard copy’ traditions alive. One of these, which stretches back nearly 30 years, is to […]

This is a guest post by Ulf Hedetoft, author of The Morality of Politics: States, Honour and War   Today everyone is a moralist. Citizens as well as politicians routinely draw lines between good and bad, between who they side with and who they regard as enemies. They know – or at least feel – […]

This is an author interview by Keith McDonald and Wayne Johnson, authors of The Spectral West: Super-Nature and the Gothic and the Western Film   Q1. What was the importance of writing this book now? The Western has always been cyclical in terms of its popularity and the ways that it responds to socio/political/cultural tensions. […]

This is a guest post by Lisa Hopkins, author of Bare Ruined Choirs: Sacred Spaces in Four Early Modern Plays When Shakespeare writes in Sonnet 73 of ‘Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang’, he was referring to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, begun in 1536 by King Henry VIII as part of […]