Reviews

Christopher Nolan’s star-studded epic is a triumph of spectacle and a timely parable about imperial war. But its hero’s-eye view of history, our reviewer argues, tells only the story of kings – not the peasants who ended their age.

Richard Rose’s The Disruption of the British Party System offers a dispassionate, data-driven guide to a fractured political landscape, but its refusal to ask why things are breaking down is also its biggest limitation.

A new book uses declassified FBI files and a son’s own research to expose Washington’s decades-long campaign against Puerto Rican independence and the man at its centre.

A new documentary built around US journalist Abby Martin’s rare interview with Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel offers a rigorous corrective to decades of western misrepresentation of the island and its revolution.

Andrew Hedges reviews a new book that doubles as a portrait of his own County Durham and argues that the left must learn from Thatcher's success at ‘subject formation’ if it wants to build one of its own.

A forensic new book by Daniel Trilling traces how Britain's political establishment normalised the far right and asks whether it's too late to reverse course.

When was the last time a British socialist wrote 40,000 words about anything? Pope Leo XIV has and it's about AI, dignity and the dangers of unchecked capital. Disagree with him if you like – but read him first, says Finn Lees in this review of the pontiff’s latest encyclical.

With the football World Cup starting next week, Andy Walsh has a very timely review of a new book that reveals the dark underbelly of the beautiful game as it hits the headlines around the globe.

A new book charting the history of the far left in Britain from 1956 to the present day offers the reader an illuminating analysis on the left’s strengths and weaknesses, says Clive Hedges.

The new BBC director general Matt Brittin starts work this week. Below, Granville Williams reviews a new book which contains 24 letters of advice to the BBC’s new man at the top.