Rupert Christiansen

JS Tennant’s book is praised for its vivid, nuanced exploration of Cuba’s history, culture and contradictions, weaving together figures from colonial explorers to political leaders and even the story of a celebrated gorilla. The review highlights Cuba’s complex past, from indigenous destruction and slavery to US influence, revolution and ongoing hardship under the Castro regime. Tennant’s blend of travel writing, historical insight and atmospheric storytelling is commended for capturing the island’s layered identity, earning the book a strong recommendation.

Rupert Christiansen reviews Edmund Richardson’s biography of Alexander the Great, praising its energetic prose while rejecting the claim that Alexander reshaped reality for the better. The review emphasizes Alexander’s military brilliance, systematic tactics and extraordinary conquests from Greece through Persia and Egypt to the Hindu Kush, but stresses the devastation, mass deaths, looting and political instability associated with his rule. As Alexander’s power grew, megalomania and paranoia led to the execution of allies and increasingly reckless campaigns. Mutiny forced him to abandon his advance, and he died in Babylon at 32, leaving an empire that rapidly collapsed. Richardson offers no major scholarly reassessment but is credited with presenting a compelling and darker portrait of Alexander.

Rupert Christiansen gives Matei Candea’s Reason, Carnival and Honour four stars for its nuanced analysis of the free-speech debate. Candea organizes the subject around three models: reason, which emphasizes rational democratic exchange; carnival, which represents unruly anti-censorship and transgressive expression; and honour, which concerns sincerity, reputation and moral courage. The review applies these ideas to controversies involving Palestine Action, hate-speech laws, gender politics, protest movements and online forums. Christiansen praises the book’s clarity and importance but finds its treatment of social media and the “interpersonal public” less convincing. The book is published by Pelican at £22.

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’s book reconstructs Babylonian civilization from cuneiform evidence, portraying a prosperous and sophisticated society shaped by trade, slavery, absolute monarchy, mathematics, astronomy and comparatively flexible sexual norms. The book traces Babylon’s rise under Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar II, its conflicts with Assyria and Persia, and its eventual decline after power shifted toward the Mediterranean. It also challenges simplified biblical interpretations of the Babylonian Captivity and cautions against idealizing Cyrus the Great. The review praises the book as meticulously researched, witty and enthralling, awarding it five stars.

Rupert Christiansen gives Roderick Beaton’s Europe: A New History four stars, praising its lucid, ideologically restrained survey of 2,500 years of European history. Beaton presents Europe as both a geographical landmass and a contested political idea, tracing aspirations for unity from the Achaean League and the Congress of Vienna to the European Union, while emphasizing the persistent force of national interests and Euroscepticism. The review notes omissions, particularly the Atlantic slave trade, public hygiene and the transformative impact of railways, but finds the book’s long perspective and treatment of subjects such as the Ottoman decline highly effective. Its concluding warning is that divided European states may become vulnerable to more ruthless neighbours, a concern sharpened by the war in Ukraine and uncertainty over NATO’s future.

Rupert Christiansen gives Antony Beevor’s biography of Rasputin three stars, praising its crisp writing, archival research and compelling account of the mystic’s influence over Nicholas II and Alexandra. The review portrays Rasputin as a charismatic but coarse and manipulative figure whose access to the imperial family contributed to corrupt and incompetent wartime government. Christiansen argues that the book offers little new after numerous earlier biographies and provides too little nuance about Rasputin’s posthumous mythologisation or Russia’s fate after the Revolution, leaving a decent but ultimately disappointing account.

Rupert Christiansen presents a personal ranking of 20 outstanding non-fiction books spanning memoir, biography, philosophy, history, science, feminism, art criticism, travel writing and domestic instruction. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species takes first place, followed by James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson and Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table. The selections are praised for their intellectual influence, literary quality and ability to reshape readers’ understanding of human experience, while the list also highlights works confronting totalitarianism, racism, gender inequality, colonialism and corporate responsibility for the opioid crisis.

Helen Lewis’s The Genius Myth argues that genius is not the product of isolated, innate brilliance but emerges from tradition, collaboration, social conditions and hard work. The review praises its discussion of IQ, racism, eugenics and the support systems behind celebrated male achievers, but finds the later essays disconnected and overly focused on the Beatles. It also faults the book for neglecting unusual neurological abilities and the emerging question of whether artificial intelligence could represent a new form of genius.

Rupert Christiansen reviews Tiffany Jenkins’s Strangers and Intimates, a history of privacy and the changing boundary between private and public life. The book traces debates from Reformation-era conscience and Victorian household privacy through twentieth-century sociology, wiretapping, Watergate, data collection and reality television to contemporary surveillance and online-safety regulation. Christiansen praises Jenkins’s lucid, balanced research and her conclusion that the private realm deserves equal recognition with the public, though he finds the historical survey occasionally like a rapid introductory course and notes its limited treatment of tabloid intrusion involving the Royal family and celebrities. He considers the book’s criticism of Scottish legislation, including the Named Persons Act and Hate Crime and Public Order Act, a forceful warning that privacy is increasingly threatened by both indifference and suspicion.

Owen Hatherley’s The Alienation Effect argues that Central European émigrés, many of them Jewish refugees from fascism, profoundly reshaped British visual culture, architecture, town planning, photography, film and publishing. The review particularly praises Hatherley’s account of how ideas from Red Vienna and Weimar Berlin influenced British council estates and post-war reconstruction, while also tracing modernism’s unexpected English roots. Rupert Christiansen finds the book impassioned, erudite and important, though sometimes exhausting because of its density of names and examples; he awards it four stars.

Rupert Christiansen gives Josephine Baker's newly translated memoir a three-star assessment. First published in French in 1949 and assembled from interviews with Marcel Sauvage, Fearless and Free vividly recounts Baker's impoverished Missouri childhood, rise to fame in Paris, wartime service for France and career as a performer. The memoir offers an apparently spontaneous voice and colourful details, but largely avoids her love life, civil-rights activism and later family life. Christiansen is particularly disturbed by an antisemitic passage, while finding much of the remaining material slight or repetitive. The book enriches but does not substantially change the established portrait of Baker.

Michael Krielaars’s The Sound of Utopia examines how Stalinist ideology and socialist realism controlled Soviet music, forcing composers and performers to compromise, conform or face imprisonment and persecution. The review highlights the experiences of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Rostropovich, Vsevolod Zaderatsky, Vadim Kozin and Moisei Weinberg, emphasizing the moral ambiguity of survival under dictatorship. Rupert Christiansen finds the book chatty, accessible and strongest in its portraits of lesser-known musicians, but criticizes its superficial research, limited musical expertise and failure to engage major scholars and important post-Stalin cultural figures.

Rupert Christiansen praises Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s detailed account of the downfall of Nicholas II and Alexandra during the February and March 1917 crises. Hasegawa argues that political manoeuvring, rather than primarily starving workers and disaffected soldiers, triggered the insurrection, and that the monarchy could have survived through reform and patriotic mobilisation. Nicholas’s refusal to compromise, disastrous military leadership, reliance on Alexandra and figures such as Rasputin and Alexander Protopopov, and indifference to public suffering destroyed the regime’s remaining legitimacy. His abdication and mishandling of the succession opened the way to the abolition of the monarchy, the Bolshevik takeover and the murder of the Romanov family.

Sebastian Smee’s Paris in Ruins examines the emergence of Impressionism amid the collapse of Napoleon III’s regime, the Franco-Prussian War, the siege of Paris and the violent suppression of the Paris Commune. The book’s central artistic relationship is that of Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, though the reviewer finds Smee’s suggestion of an unconsummated romance speculative. Morisot receives especially strong treatment, while Manet is presented as a more ambiguous and influential figure. The review praises Smee’s buoyant prose, engaging portraits and clear historical narrative, but finds his explanation for Impressionism’s lack of engagement with contemporary violence evasive and laments the book’s sparse illustrations.

Peter Parker’s two-volume anthology documents gay life in post-war London from 1945 to 1967 through letters, diaries, parliamentary records, press reports, police files and cultural works. The review highlights the period’s prosecutions, police entrapment, censorship, blackmail, public hostility and proposed conversion treatments, while tracing a gradual shift toward reform through the Wolfenden Report, changing popular culture and the Sexual Offences Act 1967. Christiansen praises the anthology’s breadth and Parker’s commentary but finds it repetitive, regrets the lack of an index and illustrations, and argues that legalization was only a false dawn because police persecution and social prejudice persisted.

Michael Nott’s biography presents Thom Gunn as a poet divided between disciplined classical craftsmanship and a hedonistic, sexually adventurous life in San Francisco’s gay subculture. The book traces Gunn’s formative relationships with Mike Kitay and Tony White, his development under Yvor Winters, his fascination with biker masculinity, and his immersion in drugs and sexual freedom. The AIDS crisis prompted some of his most powerful poetry, especially The Man with Night Sweats, while Kitay and poetry helped sustain him through widespread loss. Gunn’s final years were marked by amphetamine addiction, exploitative relationships and polysubstance abuse, but the review concludes that the lasting greatness of his poetry survives his troubled life.

Rupert Christiansen reviews Ed Simon's Devil's Contract, a sweeping history of Faustian bargains from Christian theology and medieval legends to Faust, Goethe, music, witch trials and the foundations of colonial America. Simon argues that modern compromises with capitalism, slavery, fossil fuels, nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence could bring humanity to a final reckoning. Christiansen finds the book engaging, learned and ambitious, but criticizes its grandiose scope and overheated rhetoric.

Rupert Christiansen finds Katherine Bucknell’s new biography of Christopher Isherwood admirably researched and warmly sympathetic but less compelling than Peter Parker’s earlier, longer study. The book adds detail about Isherwood’s turbulent relationship with Don Bachardy and his affair with Anthony Page, yet offers few revelations. Isherwood is presented as a lucid, detached observer whose writing excelled in small-scale studies, while his honesty about homosexuality and his pursuit of Hindu spirituality are treated as central to his legacy. The review argues that Bucknell is strongest on his later California years but less assured when covering his British background, Berlin period and prewar political milieu.

Rupert Christiansen praises Matthew Lockwood’s history of refugees and exiles in Britain as a vivid, non-ideological contribution to a polarized immigration debate. The book traces Britain’s changing attitudes from the Reformation through the arrival of Huguenots, Jewish refugees, political exiles, victims of slavery, wartime fugitives, Windrush migrants and more recent refugees. It shows how newcomers often enriched British society despite recurring prejudice, and argues that historical perspective can temper contemporary fear and simplistic judgments.

Mark Bostridge's biography examines Adèle Hugo, Victor Hugo's younger daughter, whose unhappy life was shaped by her father's fame and grief before becoming consumed by an obsessive pursuit of British army officer Albert Pinson. After following Pinson from the Channel Islands to Nova Scotia and Barbados, Adèle suffered a mental and physical breakdown and spent much of her later life in sanatoria. The review praises Bostridge's deeper archival research, his more sympathetic assessment of Pinson and his tactful use of parallels from his own life, concluding that the resulting book is painful, haunting and beautifully written.