New Books in British Studies

By Marshall PoeSociety & Culture History

New Books in British Studies episodes

July 01 Thomas Paine at the Semiquincentennial: A Conversation with Gregory Claeys
Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (Princeton University Press, 2026) is the first major new edition of Paine’s works, bringing together all his writings in six breathtaking volumes that dramatically revise our previous understanding of his activities as a writer and his importance as a democratic theorist in the age of revolutions. It includes about 180 new letters and some two hundred works newly attributed to Paine, with twenty-nine works previously regarded as Paine’s being deattributed. Drawing on pioneering computerized text analysis that makes possible for the first time attributions of anonymous and pseudonymous texts, this collection includes in volumes 5–6 newly identified pamphlets and newspaper and journal contributions, and suggests that Paine was extremely active as a Grub Street oppositional Whig writer in the decade prior to the American Revolution. Many writings from the period of his residence in France (1792–1802) and his subsequent return to the United States are also restored to his published output. Paine emerges as a much more consistent and serious democratic theorist than is often assumed, whose contributions to revolutionary debates in America, Britain, and France were unparalleled in their time. This volume spans the years 1772 to 1782, a decade that witnessed a diverse output of writings from Paine, from editorials and magazine pieces to pamphlets and newspaper articles. The book includes the Forester Letters, the Crisis papers, the Deane Affair articles, and Common Sense, with Gregory Claeys’s general introduction and commentary by the editors providing invaluable historical context.
Gregory Claeys is professor emeritus of the history of political thought at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
57 min
July 01 Peter Ross, "Insatiable Appetites: Eating Out in Georgian London" (Bodleian Library, 2026)
In Insatiable Appetites: Eating Out in Georgian London (Bodleian Library, 2026) by Dr. Peter Ross, step into the kitchens, streets
and chop houses of Georgian London—one day, one city, countless
appetites. From dawn until past midnight, Londoners dined at taverns,
coaching inns, oyster rooms, confectioners, coffee shops, chocolate
houses, soup shops
and dining rooms. For the poor, the streets bustled with vendors
offering early versions of fast food: hot green peas, baked potatoes,
suet puddings, curds and whey, rice milk, gingerbread, pastry ‘pigs,’
and the now-forgotten saloop, a warming drink made from orchid roots.
After
dark, sex workers and their clients indulged in a glass of jelly, then
considered an aphrodisiac, as a precursor to a visit to the brothel. As
the empire expanded, culinary influences poured in: London’s first
Indian takeaway appeared in 1773, while the East End became home to
Jewish fried fish, Italian baloney and German sausages.
Through
the course of a single day, this book takes readers on a journey through
breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper in Georgian London, drawing on
contemporary archives to follow hungry citizens from all walks of life
as they navigate the city’s diverse food landscape. It reveals not only
culinary pleasures and horrors, but also the social challenges and
daily struggles that shaped life in the capital.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
1 hr 4 min
July 01 Kate Bayliss, "Privatising Humanity: How Our Essential Human Needs Became Financial Assets" (Manchester UP, 2026)
Privatising Humanity: How Our Essential Human Needs Became Financial Assets (Manchester UP, 2026) is the latest book from Dr Kate Bayliss, a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Economics at SOAS, University of London. Dr Bayliss’ excellent title, published with Manchester University Press, is a critical examination of the privatisation paradigm.
In the book, Dr Bayliss specifically analyses the history, processes, political economy and outcomes of privatisation policies in Britain across three major economic sectors – that of water, energy, and housing. Infamously, Britain was arguably in the vanguard of a proliferation of privatisation policies in the 1980s, courtesy of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a key proponent of the neoliberal revolution at this time. Privatisation was touted as a solution for increased efficiency, the creation of a shareholder society, and relieving taxpayer burdens. Dr Bayliss’ book, Privatising Humanity, is a crucial tool to understand how privatisation policies were applied, who benefited, and whether the outcomes lives up to these expectations. It is both an exceptionally detailed account of the web of interests that have profited from privatisation, on the one hand, and on the other, a highly accessible volume that is critical reading in this current moment.
Elliot Dolan-Evans is a sessional lecturer and tutor in law at Monash University and RMIT. His research investigates the political economy of global capitalism, forms of international governance, and questions of war and peace. His first book, Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF and the Conflict in Ukraine, is now out with Bristol University Press.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
53 min
July 01 Good Goy, Bad Goy: The Portrayal of Gentiles in Sketches from the London Yiddish Press
Gentiles often appeared in the news sections of the London Yiddish press, and sometimes they also appeared in the regular “feuilleton” section in character sketches and fiction, stories and scenes from immigrant East-End Jewish life. Many of these portrayals were humorous local scenarios and imagined tales. This talk will look at a broad section of how and where Gentile characters appear and their relationship to the Jewish immigrant.
Gentiles fix cars and do physical chores for the hapless immigrant. The wily immigrant hoodwinks the Gentile recruiting officers during the First World War. The stern Gentile gatekeeper of British government politics, refuses access to the naïve immigrant wanting to help. The paternalistic English police officer gives directions to parts of London never before visited by an East-End immigrant. A proud fascist blackshirt is confused when he sees his respected Jewish neighbors in a strident communist counter-demonstration. Yet the word goy is also used by Jews describing each other: skipping the bus fare, not sharing their Yiddish newspaper, or being rude to their neighbor.
This lecture originally took place on January 26, 2023.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
1 hr 2 min
July 01 Jonathan Schneer, "Nine Days in May: The General Strike Of 1926" (Oxford UP, 2026)
In May, 1926, nearly three million British workers downed tools to support nearly one million of their countrymen, miners whose employers meant to lengthen their working day and cut their pay. This General Strike brought the country to a grinding halt - which, according to Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, represented a threat not merely to the nation but to the parliamentary system itself. For nine days, the world's best organized working class confronted the world's most powerful, and self-confident, government. And yet the outcome was never in doubt, for Britain's most important trade-union leaders thought as Baldwin did, although they kept saying they were engaged in a wages dispute only. Really, they feared winning even more than they feared losing.
In Nine Days in May: The General Strike of 1926 (Oxford University Press, 2026), award-winning author and historian Jonathan Schneer mines hitherto untapped archival sources to explain why and how the Strike came about, why and how it was waged and countered, why and how it ended. In addition to government reports and TUC reports, he uses reports of undercover agents and spies, "special" constables sworn in for the duration of the Strike, volunteer strike-breakers, Communist agitators, trade-union leaders and rank-and-file members of trade unions; also, of course, the papers of politicians of all parties.
This is a tale of Shakespearian dimensions, replete with tragic heroes and villains and buffoons and opportunists and double-dealers, and contending, evenly matched, forces - both of which meant to do their duty whatever the cost. There may never be another general strike in Britain, but the General Strike of 1926 was one for the ages, illuminating the human condition.
Jonathan Schneer is Professor Emeritus of History at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of New Books Network.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
1 hr 16 min
June 29 Dallas Liddle, "News Machines: The Systems of Daily Journalism in Britain, 1785–1885" (Oxford UP, 2026)
British
daily newspapers transformed rapidly at the turn of the nineteenth
century, ballooning in size and radically reorganizing staffing and
production decade by decade. By mid-century, newspapers had grown from
the folded single sheets of the previous century to large multi-page
broadsheets, so impressive in the quantity of print they held and their
speed of production that one of their nicknames was 'the daily miracle'.
Traditional
news history has overlooked a key fact for understanding this era of
news: that Victorian daily newspapers were high-pressure systems. As
demand for newspapers outpaced their original production capacity,
newspaper organizations began to build complex technical and production
mechanisms to continue to grow and compete. As these systems expanded,
newspapers became dependent on them, and decisions about how daily
journalism should develop began to pass from editorial choice to
systemic necessity. The previously untold story of Victorian daily news
is that the personalities of editors and owners and the larger social
forces at work in that era were not the only (or even primary) drivers
of its history. Once set in motion, the systems of Victorian news gained
major shaping agency over their own development.
Combining deep archival research and traditional historical analysis with modern data mining methods, News Machines: The Systems of Daily Journalism in Britain, 1785–1885
(Oxford University Press, 2026) by Dr. Dallas Liddle reconstructs the
systemic workings of Victorian daily news in unprecedented detail,
offering new and counterintuitive accounts of when and why daily papers
expanded, how and why steam-powered printing machines developed, how
specialized news discourses evolved, and how newspaper leadership was
organized.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
55 min
June 26 Philip Norman, "Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles" (Da Capo Press, 2026)
Philip Norman's latest biography, Mr. Moonlight (DaCapo Press, 2026) is the definitive, comprehensive biography of Brian Epstein--the man who built the Beatles. There will never be another pop manager like Brian Epstein, the young record-retailer from Liverpool behind the 20th century's greatest romance. Having achieved his much-derided aim of making the Beatles "bigger than Elvis," Brian went on to make them bigger than any earthly instrument could measure. Only a handful of years older, he nonetheless referred them as "the Boys," protecting and pampering them like the children he could never hope to have. Due to his homosexuality--and possibly his Jewishness--Brian received no public honor (or even thanks) for this incalculable contribution to Britain's exports, let alone the national morale. He may not have been the best dealmaker for the Beatles, but in his hands, their guiding principles were always good taste, niceness to their fans, and value for money. Yet his only tangible memorials are a blue plaque marking his former office in London's theatreland and a modest bronze statue near the site of his family's electrical goods store in Liverpool. Mr. Moonlight draws on a cache of never-before-heard audio interviews to tell the story of this hugely complex, self-contradictory, and ultimately tragic character. From his Pre-Beatles years--the eight different expensive private schools at which he failed to shine, his problematic career as an army National Serviceman, his vague ambitions to be a couturier--through his management of the Beatles, where he turned a quartet of unruly young musicians in cracked black leather into a worldwide religion, up to his supposedly "incautious" overdoses in 1967 at aged 32, and the calamity that followed. As John Lennon said upon hearing the news, "Then we're fucked!"--and they were.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
43 min
June 24 Hilary R. Buxton, "Disabled Empire: The Colonial Body in First World War Britain" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
Disabled Empire: The Colonial Body in First World War Britain (U Chicago Press, 2026) examines how imperial precedents and racial ideologies shaped the medical treatments that the British state offered to several million Black and brown servicemen during World War I. In recovering the voices and experiences of these soldiers, Hilary R. Buxton illustrates how they navigated the institutional culture of the imperial military and how they helped to shape health and welfare systems well beyond the interwar period.
The Great War was the first time that troops and volunteers from nearly all reaches of the Empire participated in the war effort side-by-side. Despite official attempts at segregation, colonial troops met in trenches, mobile camps, casualty clearing stations, hospital ships, and convalescent homes. Just as importantly, those organizing treatment encountered men of different ethnicities, religions, and cultures from across and beyond the British Empire. For British officials, this moment offered an opportunity to remake colonial efficiency and medical knowledge. Yet, as Buxton shows, colonial servicemen were not passive subjects in a wartime laboratory: they were vocal participants who demanded a say in the therapies prescribed to them, the rations they required, the psychiatric care they received, and the prosthetics with which they were fitted. Together, these encounters profoundly remade colonial relations, reshaping imperial science, administration, and colonial understandings of subjecthood.
Disabled Empire pushes literature on the war and medicine outside its national, Eurocentric focus to confront the colonial logic of global health inequity.
Hilary R. Buxton is assistant professor of history at Kenyon College.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.
YouTube Channel: here
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
1 hr 19 min
June 23 Christina Williams "Work of Fiction: Making a Living from Writing in the UK" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024)
Just how difficult is a career as a writer? In Work of Fiction: Making a Living from Writing in the UK (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024) Christina Williams, a Lecturer in Media Communications at Bath Spa University examines contemporary writing as a paradoxical and precarious occupation. Foregrounding the experiences of a range of different writers, the book shows the range of work writers actually do to sustain their lives, along with the ideas and ideologies that help them to cope with the complexity and contradictions of their vocation. Rich with narratives of the love, luck and magic associated with the contemporary publishing industry, the book will be of interest across the arts, humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in reading about writing!
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
41 min
June 23 Catherine Fletcher, "The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In Renaissance Italy, the gun was not only a tool of war but also a
desirable object, a luxury item carried at court. Guns were in use on
the battlefield by 1440; later in that century Leonardo da Vinci
sketched a design for a faster-firing, more portable handgun that could
be hidden beneath a cloak. As the gun proliferated in society, it became
both a means of self-defence and a threat to civic order. In The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires (Princeton
University Press, 2026), historian Catherine Fletcher explores the
emergence of firearms in Renaissance Italy and beyond, describing the
social transformations that accompanied the evolution of the handgun
from innovative military technology to widely used personal accessory.
Fletcher shows that as guns became smaller and the new wheellock
mechanism made concealed carry possible, Italian states increasingly
tried to control their use—even as they viewed firearms as necessary for
their militias. In the end, Fletcher reports, the importance of civic
defence trumped the concern for social order. As guns became ever more
acceptable, stories of how firearms aided Europeans’ overseas conquests
created a new and more positive image for a weapon once considered the
devil’s work. Debates over the regulation of firearms five centuries
ago—which included arguments over the restriction of gun ownership, the
use of guns for self-defence and the regulation of an armed militia—in
many ways anticipate discussions about gun control today. Fletcher’s
groundbreaking account sheds new light on how governments weighed the
competing priorities of defence and social order as they set out to
build empires.
Catherine Fletcher is professor of history at Manchester Metropolitan
University. She is the author of several books on early modern Italy,
including The Roads to Rome, The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance and The Black Prince of Florence: The Life of Alessandro de’ Medici.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University
of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies;
Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual)
History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.
YouTube Channel: here
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
49 min

About New Books in British Studies

From the publisher's feed

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.