Culture & History
I write regularly about cultural issues in the British press, including drawing on my work as a historian to provide context for contemporary debate.
I can be irrepressible when talking history: I recently enjoyed explaining the relative sexual virtues of Elizabeth I on Channel 5’s ‘Last Days of Mary Queen of Scots’, and leading a historians’ live-tweet of historical context for the BBC’s Wolf Hall. You’ll also find some of my book reviews, lighter pieces and broader arts writing on this page.
Why is Elizabeth I, the most powerful woman in our history, always depicted as a grotesque?
written for The Guardian, 25 May 2015 Zounds! The BBC’s new docu-drama series, Armada, opened last night with visual reenactments of all the hoary tropes of Elizabethan storytelling: a beleaguered isle, led by a vacillating queen; plucky English sailors knocking together a flotilla from the few planks of...
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Richard is Richard: Let’s not play heroes and villains with our history
written for The Spectator, 26 March 2015 We should have known it. Today’s reburial isn’t about Richard III. It’s about Benedict Cumberbatch. Isn’t everything these days, somehow about Benedict Cumberbatch? I have a theory that he’s the one who really punched Oisin Tymon, and poor Clarkson is just...
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Learn from Elizabeth I, Cameron: a named successor is a shroud
written for The Spectator, 24th March 2015 As Fraser Nelson says on this morning’s Spectator podcast, David Cameron will likely be regretting yesterday’s announcement for the rest of his premiership. He’s not a ripe watermelon; highlighting that he has a best before date won’t encourage...
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Women of Troy, Women of Syria
written for Index on Censorship, March 2015. see also “From Euripides to “The Archers”, The Times, January 2015 In a shabby Amman apartment, 23-year-old Raneem has been practicing her stage make-up again. One of the 600,000 Syrian refugees living in Jordan, her clothes now come from...
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In an age of ISIS, we need to think critically about saints like Thomas More
written for The Spectator, 19 February 2015 Next week, in the final episode of the BBC’s Wolf Hall, we’ll see Anne Boleyn face death by beheading. But if you watched last night’s episode, you’ll know – accurately – that in her final months, she grew to fear something far worse, death by burning....
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Wolf Hall, BBC Two review: ‘no heart of darkness, just bad lighting’
Wolf Hall, Episode One, reviewed for The Spectator, 22 January 2015 It starts in darkness. And no, it’s not a metaphor for the crooked timber of the human heart, it’s just bad lighting. Stanley Kubrick sourced his cameras from NASA in order to capture candlelight in his eighteenth-century...
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