Myths of the great statesmen
New studies of Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson show the rewards and perils of political biography.
ByHistory books
Discover all the New Statesman’s latest articles and reviews of history books. Here you can find expert opinion on the best reads for 2022.
How India made the ancient world
William Dalrymple’s The Golden Road places India, not China or Europe, as the global wellspring of learning and power.
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The fall of a Stuart spin doctor
The Duke of Buckingham served King James I better as a lover than a statesman – and his blunders laid…
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Keir Starmer’s union problem
The government wants to reset its relationship with organised labour – but history shows this won’t be an easy task.
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How motherhood was weaponised
Is child-rearing political or deeply personal? Helen Charman’s new history reckons with the tension between mother and state.
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A bloody American ancestry
Advancing through fear and violence, amassing wealth and power, the Blood dynasty embodied the untamed spirits of a young nation.
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Hitler, Putin and the information wars
Peter Pomerantsev’s new book shows how Second World War propaganda tactics are being used by the Kremlin today.
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Escape from the oldest hatred
In Rachel Cockerell’s Melting Point, the forgotten story of America’s Jewish homeland sheds light on the tragedies of the present.
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Your own personal Jesus
In the beginning there were many different sons of God – Western Christianity triumphed not by destiny but accident.
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The myth of “the West”
Our simplistic attitude to Western civilisation overlooks the global trade and culture that created it.
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Ukraine’s history war
Tanja Maljartschuk’s novel Forgottenness confronts Ukraine's long struggle for nationhood in the face of Russia’s “imperial oblivion”.
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How Iraq was lost
Steve Coll’s account of America’s relationship with Saddam Hussein reveals a series of devastating blunders.
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The women that books built
How the bluestockings used wit and learning to subvert a deeply misogynist culture.
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Edwardians like us
In Little Englanders, Alwyn Turner reveals striking parallels between Britain in decline at the start of the 20th century and…
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Lessons from The World of Yesterday
Stefan Zweig’s 1942 portrait of the late Austro-Hungarian empire remains a stark warning against taking national security for granted.
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Ripping up the Iron Curtain
How a mass picnic party broke open Hungary’s Austrian border and foreshadowed the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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The dictator’s best friend
From Mussolini to Mao, autocrats have often turned to writers to tighten their grip on power.
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Empire’s final reckoning
Sathnam Sanghera’s Empireworld captures the complexity of British imperialism’s legacy – but can its injustices yet be undone?
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The Polish Revolution
Timothy Garton Ash’s account of the Solidarity movement shows how Poland has resisted Russian control, and led me to a…
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József Debreczeni’s letter from the land of the dead
A rediscovered memoir from an Auschwitz survivor offers powerful lessons for our own reckonings with the Holocaust.
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