‘Never been to Oxford?! Where have you been living your life?’
Safely back from my trip to the dreaming spires, where I had a very receptive / indulgent audience at the Oxford e-Research Centre. Maybe I’ve already bored regular readers with this before, but wandering round the colleges afterwards I was reminded of my first visit there, a few years back, to interview a very eminent historian. When we met, I told him I’d arrived early to have a look round, as I’d never been before. His astonished response was: ‘Never been to Oxford?! Where have you been living your life?’
Anyway, enough of such reminiscences, and on with serious matters. Our featured review this week is of The Battle of Britishness: Migrant Journeys, 1685 to the Present by Tony Kushner. Laurence Brown and the author discuss a book which poses a profound challenge to not only historians, but also contemporary policy-makers and museum practitioners (no. 1566, with response here).
Then we turn to Chaplains in Early Modern England: Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, Tom Lockwood and Gillian Wright. Nicholas Cranfield enjoys ten thought-provoking essays, which suggest the need to further research the ministry of the Church of England (no. 1565).
Next up is Paul Kleber Monod’s Solomon’s Secret Arts: the Occult in the Age of Enlightenment, which Peter Elmer believes lays impressive foundations for anyone wishing to engage with the broad appeal of occult thinking in England between 1650 and 1800 (no. 1564).
Finally, Jamie Stoops reviews a dense and well-researched investigation of the ‘moral economy’ of Britain’s wartime and post-war white, grey, and black markets, Black Market: Britain 1939-1955 by Mark Roodhouse (no. 1563).