New Books in British Studies
by Marshall Poe
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
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Episodes
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Romantic Media and Wartime Networks with Deven Parker (Stanford UP, 2026)
Romantic Media and Wartime Networks (Stanford UP, 2026) by Dr. Deven Parker tells the story of how Britain revolutionized its state communication networks on an unprecedented scale during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, setting the stage for our modern infrastructure state where...
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Selling the Word of God: The Early Commercial History of the English Bible with Harry Spillaine (Bodleian, 2026)
Selling the Word of God: The Early Commercial History of the English Bible (Bodleian, 2026) by Dr. Harry Spillane is a history of the English Bible as a book. A book that in order to be read had first to be sold. The Bible is the most published text in history and the story of its publication in...
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Terror, Torture and State Violence in Colonial India, with Deana Heath, hosted by Salman Sayyid and Claudia Radiven
In this episode, Salman Sayyid and Claudia Radiven were joined by Deana Heath to discuss her work Colonial Terror: Torture and State Violence in Colonial India (Oxford UP, 2026). Heath’s work explores the legacies of colonial violence in India, Britain’s colonial amnesia in reckoning with it’s…
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Radio ReOrient S15:2: Terror, Torture and State Violence in Colonial India, with Deana Heath, hosted by Salman Sayyid and Claudia Radiven
In this episode, Salman Sayyid and Claudia Radiven were joined by Deana Heath to discuss her work Colonial Terror: Torture and State Violence in Colonial India (Oxford UP, 2026). Heath’s work explores the legacies of colonial violence in India, Britain’s colonial amnesia in reckoning with it’s…
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Disability: A History of Resistance with David Turner (Random House, 2026)
Despite there being more than 16 million disabled people in the UK today, disability rarely features in mainstream accounts of our past. That absence is not down to a lack of evidence: it is a forgotten, suppressed history – the result of deliberate choices about whose histories matter. This...
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Christmas Carols: An English Enchantment with John Potter (Yale UP, 2026)
The English Christmas carol has been sung in court and cloister, tavern and field since medieval times. But with the first Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in 1880—and with a view to encouraging revellers into church—the humble carol became integral to the Christmas tradition. Carol concerts…
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Reading for Pleasure: Working Women and the Popular Romance in Early Twentieth-Century Britain with Lise Shapiro Sanders (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Lise Shapiro Sanders is the author of Reading for Pleasure: Working Women and the Popular Romance in Early 20c Britain, published in October 2026 by Bloomsbury Academic Press. Reading for Pleasure analyzes the early 20th-century British romance as a genre directed at young working women…
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Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712 with Nat Cutter (Oxford UP, 2026)
From the mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth century, a wide network of English-speaking men, women, and children took up residence in the Ottoman Maghrebi regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. There they formed expatriate communities, engaged with the societies around them, and undertook…
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The Brass Band Story with Trevor Herbert (Yale UP, 2026)
Brass bands have played a unique role in the cultural history of Britain. Amidst the industrial revolution, an increasingly urban population turned to music for mass entertainment. Brass bands became intimately associated with working men and spread across the country at breathtaking speed. At...
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Tyrants and Traders: Tintagel, Arthur and the Lost Kings with Ken Dark (Bloomsbury, 2026)
How Roman Britain ended is one of the most controversial questions in British history. Unique among former Roman citizens in Western Europe, the Britons established long-lived kingdoms, resisting 'barbarian' political takeover for centuries. Yet so little is known of them from written records…
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Think of England: Nation, People, and Race in the English Imagination with Paul Kléber Monod (Cambridge UP, 2026)
What is the basis of English national identity? How has this changed over time, and what is its future? Tracing the history of English identity over more than 2,000 years, Think of England: Nation, People, and Race in the English Imagination (Cambridge UP, 2026) explores how being English has…
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Creatures of Story and Song: Tracing Britain's Lost Species with Lee Raye (Reaktion, 2026)
Lee Raye joins Jana Byars to talk about their new book, Creatures of Story and Song: Tracing Britain's Lost Species (Reaktion, 2026). Discover why a beaver was said to bite off its own testicles, why the baleen of a right whale was prized by medieval knights or why you should give your crush the...
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All Around Is Fairy Ground: Pleasure and the Regency Garden with Timothy Mowl (Reaktion, 2026)
Regency gardens dazzled with colour, invention and theatricality: trellises heavy with roses and jasmine, shrubberies designed for intrigue and lawns enlivened with pools, grottoes and fanciful ornaments. Yet behind this world of perfume and spectacle lay a striking social shift. In a domain long...
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The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa with Adam Rovner (U California Press, 2025)
This vivid reconstruction of one man’s life reveals the harsh realities and moral ambiguities of colonial power. The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa (U California Press, 2025) tells the story of Nathaniel Isaacs—a nineteenth-century...
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Treasures on Earth: Buried Wealth in Landscape and Legend with Jeremy Harte (Reaktion, 2026)
Jeremy Harte, President of the Folklore Society, joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book Treasures on Earth: Buried Wealth in Landscape and Legend (Reaktion, 2026). The book uncovers the deep folklore of Britain's buried riches, fears, and desires. From haunted barrows to ruined castles,...
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Assassins and Secret Listeners: Britain's Invisible Armies, 1939-45 with Alistair Moffat (Birlinn, 2026)
Throughout Britain, all day, every day and in the dead of night, the secret listeners went about their solitary work. Hands on headphones, these men and women, drawn from all walks of civilian life, listened to the coded messages of German intelligence and passed hundreds of thousands of them on…
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Fitness for Freedom: Disability, Degeneration, and Modern Irish Writing with Marion Quirici (Syracuse UP, 2025)
Fitness for Freedom: Disability, Degeneration, and Modern Irish Writing (Syracuse UP, 2025) explores the legacy of intersectional stereotypes of disability, race, gender, sexuality, class, and religion that justified imperial rule in Ireland and the forms of oppression that continued after...
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Matthew Mason, "Seeking the High Ground: Slavery and Political Conflict in the British Atlantic World" (U Virginia Press, 2025)
How is it, Samuel Johnson famously asked on the eve of the Revolution, that Americans could so vociferously demand freedom for themselves while so conspicuously continuing to deny it to those they held in slavery? With Seeking the High Ground: Slavery and Political Conflict in the British…
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Arthur der Weduwen, "The Last Invasion of England: 1688 and the Dutch Armada" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In popular accounts of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the autocratic Catholic King James II was ousted by his subjects and replaced by his Protestant daughter Mary Stuart, wife of James’s nephew, the Dutch William III of Orange. Devoted to her husband, Mary would not accept the crown alone, and...
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John Gilbert McCurdy, "Vicious and Immoral: Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburgh" (JHU Press, 2024)
The fascinating story of a British army chaplain's buggery trial in 1774 reveals surprising truths about early America. On the eve of the American Revolution, the British army considered the case of a chaplain, Robert Newburgh, who had been accused of having sex with a man. Newburgh's enemies…
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Ciara Breathnach, "Absence in the Archives" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Ciara Breathnach is Professor of Irish Gender History at University College Cork. She has published widely on Irish socio-economic, gender, cultural and health history. Her last monograph Ordinary lives, death and social class: Dublin City Coroner’s Court, 1876-1902 (Oxford University Press…
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Stuart McHardy, "Scotland's Geomythography: Myth, Landscape and the Roots of Culture" (Luath Press, 2025)
What can we learn from our landscape? How can Geomythography help us understand our cultural heritage? What is Geomythography? Geomythography is the interpretation of prehistoric and later societies at specific locales through a combination of oral tradition, place-names, landscape analysis and...
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Nikhil Kalyanpur, "Legal Weapons of the Wealthy: The Offshoring of Elite Conflict in Emerging Markets" (Cornell UP, 2026)
In Legal Weapons of the Wealthy: The Offshoring of Elite Conflict in Emerging Markets (Cornell University Press, 2026), Dr. Nikhil Kalyanpur examines a striking feature of today's global legal order: the use of foreign courts by elites to settle domestic disputes. On the surface, the…
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Aonghus MacKechnie, "Edinburgh: City of Romanticism" (Lund Humphries, 2026)
Romanticism made Scotland famous. It critically shaped the course of Scottish culture, while impacting on cultures elsewhere and inaugurating the country’s still-flourishing and lucrative tourist industry. This book is about Edinburgh’s most emblematic architecture over the long 19th century: the...
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Catherine S. Chan, "Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong (Cornell University Press, 2026) explores the dark side of colonial modernity through canine eyes, showing the many ways that dogs involuntarily contributed to the modernization of twentieth-century Hong Kong. Dr. Catherine S. Chan follows…
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Courtney Weikle‑Mills, "Sugarcoated Ethics: Children’s Literature and Atlantic Enslavement" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)
What if children’s literature was never as innocent as we imagine? In Sugarcoated Ethics: Children’s Literature and Atlantic Enslavement (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), the relationship between childhood reading and Atlantic slavery is brought into sharp focus. The book argues that...
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Stefan Collini, "Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Stefan Collini The study and teaching of English literature is generally regarded as one of the central disciplines in the modern university, yet for much of its history it struggled to gain...
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Holly Crawford Pickett, "The Drama of Serial Conversion in Early Modern England" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
After mounting London’s outdoor pulpit known as St. Paul’s Cross on 8th December, 1588, Anthony Tyrrell found himself perched before a skeptical audience. He stood in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral to declare his recantation of Catholicism and return to England’s official Protestant Church.…
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An Honest Death: Life's End and Humanist Funerals with Matthew Engelke
A fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at non-religious funerals in contemporary London, An Honest Death: Life's End and Humanist Funerals (Princeton UP, 2026) is an intimate and moving ethnographic account of funerals for people who don’t believe in God or an afterlife. Focusing on secular…
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Paul Johnson, "Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next" (Princeton UP, 2026)
There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including the UK, have experienced persistent economic stagnation accompanied by declining trust in institutions. Governments are struggling to respond not only to...
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Speech and the City
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Yaron Matras about his new book Speech and the City. In this timely book, Yaron shows that cities can provide an important counter-weight to political polarization by forging civic identities that embrace diversity.…
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Malcolm Murfett, "Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937–38" (Tithebarn Press, 2026)
As Foreign Secretary in Neville Chamberlain's Cabinet in 1937, Eden didn't believe in appeasing the German and Italian dictatorships or the militaristic Japanese regime. Instead, he wanted to confront their aggression head on. Faced with growing Japanese assertiveness, including the launching of…
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Ian Bradley, "Liquid Faith: Scotland's Sacred and Supernatural Waters" (Birlinn, 2026)
Since time immemorial, water has been a major theme in myth, religion and folklore throughout the world. With its 12,000-mile coastline, as well as a plethora of rivers and lochs, Scotland is a particularly rewarding place in which to explore the spiritual dimensions of what is both the most...
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Utathya Chattopadhyaya, "Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India" (U California Press, 2026)
Ganja is the popular name in Hindustani, Bengali, and other South Asian languages for intoxicating substances produced from the plant species Cannabis sativa L. Starting in the eighteenth century, British India's colonial administrators sought ways to systematically tax and govern how ganja...
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Amy Blakeway, "War and Governance in Scotland, 1543-1559: Destruction, Reconstruction and Reform" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)
Drawing from local archives alongside national and international records, War and Governance in Scotland, 1543-1559: Destruction, Reconstruction and Reform (Edinburgh UP, 2026) by Dr. Amy Blakeway argues that warfare was the defining feature of government and politics in Scotland for the two...
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Roderick Beaton, "Europe: A New History" (Allen Lane, 2026)
What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe: A New History (Allen Lane, 2026), award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as never before—as the history of an idea, and a collective identity....
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Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri eds., "Palestine in Transition: Frank Scholten's Visual Archive of the British Mandate Period" (CEU Press, 2026)
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) talks with Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri, the editors of Palestine in Transition: Frank Scholten's Visual Archive of the British Mandate Period. They discuss who Frank Scholten was, the breadth and depth of the images he took in...
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Elizabeth Tynan, "Nuclear Archipelago: Secrets, Power and the Biggest Atomic Blast in Australia" (NewSouth, 2026)
Nuclear Archipelago: Secrets, Power and the Biggest Atomic Blast in Australia (NewSouth, 2026) tells the shocking story of the two British atomic weapons test series held at Western Australia's Monte Bello Islands in 1952 and 1956. Operation Hurricane and Operation Mosaic took place at a rugged...
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Caro Pirri, "Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form in Early Modern England: Stages of Unsettlement" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Today’s guest, Caro Pirri, is the author of Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form in Early Modern England: Stages of Unsettlement (Oxford University Press, 2025). This book explores how early modern colonial travel writing informed the London theater’s spatial and placemaking conventions. It...
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Daniel Majchrowicz, "A Journey to Mecca and London: The Travels of an Indian Muslim Woman, 1909–1910" (Indiana UP, 2025)
Descended from Mughal nobility, Akhtar al-Nisa Begum Nawab Sarbuland Jung grew up in Hyderabad in southern India, where she lived a quiet, private, and privileged life at the heart of the state's royal court. In 1896, at the age of 20, she married Nawab Muhammad Hamidullah Khan Sarbuland…
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Edward T. G. Anderson, "Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Hindu nationalism is transforming India as an increasingly dominant ideology and political force. But it is also a global phenomenon, with sections of India’s vast and influential diaspora drawn to, or actively supporting, right-wing Hindu nationalism. Indians overseas can be seen as an…
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Emma Parker, "Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024) examines how autobiographical writing reflects the psychological and cultural afterlives of the British Empire. Rather than treating decolonization as a completed historical moment, Emma…
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Steven Veerapen, "Overlord: A New History of the Life and Reign of Henry VIII" (Simon & Schuster, 2026
Henry VIII is England’s most famous king. He is simultaneously the virtuous Renaissance prince gone wrong, the psychopathic, paranoid tyrant, the religious disruptor and the much-married glutton. Overlord: The Life and Reign of Henry VIII (Birlinn, 2026) is a groundbreaking study of Henry’s life...
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Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire with Simukai Chigudu
"In my home country, they call me a 'bornfree'." Simukai Chigudu was born in Zimbabwe, two years after the end of its bitter war of liberation - a war in which his father had fought. This is the story of his childhood journey through the chaos of that new country's birth to Britain, where he...
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Brent Elliott and Roger Bowdler, "The British Cemetery: Architecture, Landscape, Sculpture" (Historic England, 2026)
Roger Bowdler and Brent Elliott’s The British Cemetery: Architecture, Landscape, Sculpture, published by Historic England (2026), traces the history of the cemetery from the 17th century to the present day. The cemetery emerged as a new landscape form in the 19th century in Britain but had deep...
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Elizabeth Darling, "Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922–32" (Lund Humphries, 2026)
Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922–1932 (Lund Humphries, 2026) by Dr. Elizabeth Darling is about the architecture and design of broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s, examining the buildings which the BBC occupied in its founding decades, with a particular...
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Nabi Sahak, "Anglo-Afghan Power and Politics, 1893–1947: The Durand Line Unmasked" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
In this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Nabi Sahak about his book, Anglo-Afghan Power and Politics, 1893–1947: The Durand Line Unmasked (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). Anglo-Afghan Power and Politics revisits one of the most contested borders in the modern world. The roughly...
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Meredith Gamer, "City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London" (Yale UP, 2026)
City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London (Yale UP, 2026) uncovers the complex and often unexpected connections between eighteenth-century London’s sites of punishment and its spaces of art-making, instruction, and display. Drawing together a wide range of images…
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Claire Hubbard-Hall, "Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence" (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024)
Since the inception of the Secret Service Bureau back in 1909, women have worked at the very heart of British secret intelligence - yet their contributions have been all but written out of history. Now, drawing on private and previously-classified documents, leading historian Claire Hubbard-Hall...
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Matthew Ritger, "Houses of Correction: Carceral Institutions and Humanist Culture in Early Modern England" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
Today’s guest, Matthew Ritger, is the author of Houses of Correction: Carceral Institutions and Humanist Culture in Early Modern England (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026). This book delves into the archival records of Bridewell, Europe’s first house of correction, which was overseen by the humanist...
About this show
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com
Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
Hosted by
Marshall Poe