I've written a piece about the how and why of the reviews I write: pitching for commissions, the process of reading and writing, and the rules I try to stick to along the way. It's over on my Substack here.
News: Substack birthday
My Substack, The Broken Compass, had its first anniversary the other day. It's been a fair bit of work, but I'm really pleased with how it's going! There are over 100 pieces to read now, including: — long reads on topics such as Nottingham alabaster, the Battle of Normandy, and Joan Miró— over twenty-five in-depth... Continue Reading →
News: Substack
Something I’ve been working on for months: a long read about Nottingham alabasters - those beautiful and obscure objects of medieval devotion.
News: Engelsberg Ideas
Really enjoyed the opportunity to write about Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, one of my very favourite albums, for Engelsberg Ideas.
News: interview with Helen Castor
Helen is simply one of the best historians currently writing, and it was a privilege to interview her for my Substack. The link is here.
Newsletter 2024
It’s been another really busy year – and I’m very excited about some possible new projects in the pipeline for 2025. More of that anon, but in the meantime… Onwards! As some / most of you probably know, I started a Substack in the middle of the year – some of you will be reading... Continue Reading →
Dip My Brain in Joy: A Life with Neil Innes by Yvonne Innes
Fans of that beloved British cultural institution Doctor Who are wont to talk about ‘their’ Doctor – that is, which iteration of the character was their entry-point to the franchise. The same might be said of fans of the no-less beloved songwriter, musician and comedian Neil Innes, who died in 2019 aged 75. In the... Continue Reading →
Islamesque by Diane Darke
By the end of the 11th century, Muslim Europe was in retreat. In Spain, Christian kingdoms were slowly pushing south, while in Sicily over 200 years of Islamic rule had been ended by the Norman conquest of the island. One unexpected result of this intermingling of peoples was an unparalleled assimilation of Islamic knowledge and... Continue Reading →
Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious at the Dulwich Picture Gallery
The young girl in the painting is running towards us through an overgrown spring garden, its trees heavy with dazzling white blossom. Behind her is a bombsite – this is London in March 1950 – also overgrown. Other children are crouching among the bushes and the long grass, hunkered down behind the low garden walls,... Continue Reading →
News: Engelsberg Ideas
I have a review of the fascinating Versailles: Science and Splendour exhibition at the Science Museum new up on Engelsberg Ideas.
Substack: interview with Darren Freebury-Jones
A Q&A with Darren Freebury-Jones, author of a fascinating new book which shows us Shakespeare at work among the players and playwrights of the English Renaissance.
The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence at the V&A
If the purpose of imperial art is to inspire deference and awe, there is abundant evidence of its effect at The Great Mughals, the ravishingly beautiful new show at London’s V&A. The exhibition, which is a prelude to a major redesign of the museum’s South Asia gallery, covers the golden age of the Mughal Empire,... Continue Reading →
The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV by Helen Castor
Even when contemplating their own deaths, the two cousins inhabited different worlds. Richard II’s will, written in the spring of 1399, was largely devoted to lavish plans for his own funeral and to pursuing vengeance beyond the grave. The judgments he had recently made against his enemies, he wrote, must be defended “even to the... Continue Reading →
Medieval Women: In Their Own Words at the British Library
Three women are toiling in the field, gathering in the harvest barley. Or rather, two are bent double, scything through the stalks with short-handled sickles while behind a third pauses to stretch her back. It looks excruciating work. No doubt it was. England in the first half of the 14th century was in large part... Continue Reading →
Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic by Tabitha Stanmore
Sometime in 1492 in Whitstable on the Kent coast a woman named Alice Breede went to visit a local soothsayer. She wanted assurance about the kind of life that her young child might expect, the kind of comfort any parent might seek, even today, never mind in an age of high infant mortality. What she... Continue Reading →
Saints: A New Legendary of Heroes, Humans and Magic by Amy Jeffs
In 1693 some quarrymen working near Caerleon, outside Newport in Wales, uncovered an alabaster sculpture of a figure they did not recognise. The man wore a suit of armour, which had once been covered in gold leaf. In one hand he held a sword, in the other a pair of scales. The scales themselves held... Continue Reading →
A Twist in the Tail: How the Humble Anchovy Flavoured Western Cuisine by Christopher Beckman
To the physician Tobias Venner, in his Via recta ad vitam longam of 1620, they were ‘Anchovas, the famous meat of drunkards’, only good ‘to commend a cup of wine to the pallat, and… therefore chiefly profitable for Vintners’. No surprise, then, that Prince Hal finds a receipt for ‘Anchovies and sack after supper’ in... Continue Reading →
The wreck of the Vrouw Maria
When the connoisseur Gerrit Braancamp died in 1771, the auction of his collection was one of Amsterdam’s events of the year. Some twenty thousand people saw it; two thousand copies of the catalogue were sold. The two most valuable paintings – a triptych by Gerard Dou known as ‘The Nursery’ and ‘Large Drove of Oxen’... Continue Reading →
Mongkut of Siam: Anna Leonowens’ philosopher king
When his father, Rama II, died in 1824, the Siamese throne was taken by Mongkut’s older half-brother, who ruled as Rama III. Mongkut himself, aged 19, joined a monastery. This wasn’t unusual: three months as a monk was customary. Mongkut stayed for twenty-seven years, becoming known as Mongkut the Beggar. While in orders Mongkut spearheaded... Continue Reading →
Beowulf: Poem, Poet and Hero by Heather O’Donoghue
Beowulf is a poem steeped in mystery and otherness. It survives in only one manuscript, the Nowell Codex, named for its owner in the 16th century. The manuscript itself was fortunate to survive a fire that engulfed the library that housed it in 1731. Its edges are still charred and flaky: that’s how close it... Continue Reading →
Mathew Lyons 