New Books in British Studies

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.

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Sunday · 38 min
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 archaeology. The process is a means of finding new perspectives and interpretations to further the understanding of early and extant cultures, the continuities between them and investigating oral traditions that initially arose in pre-Christian myth, much of it concerning a Mother Goddess. In Scotland's Geomythography (Luath Press, 2025), Stuart McHardy unveils the intricate ties between Scotland’s landscapes and the rich tapestry of its pre-Christian and later traditions. Geomythography is a vital lens through which to understand the enduring relationship between the land and its people. The book invites readers to discover how communities have thrived within the land of Scotland, fostering a deep-rooted cultural connection. McHardy argues that respect for our ancestors and the knowledge they imparted shape not only individual identity but also communal responsibility towards future generations. This book is an essential read for history enthusiasts, those interested in myth and folklore and anyone interested in finding out more about Scotland’s Geomythography. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
September 4 · 32 min
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 "outsourcing" of disputes by elites from countries with fragile judiciaries looks like a search for fair treatment unavailable at home. Yet extraterritorial dispute resolution varies across such countries. Russian plutocrats, for instance, frequently litigate abroad, whereas Chinese and South African ones rarely do. Dr. Kalyanpur argues that the pursuit of extraterritorial litigation depends on the balance of power between a state and its plutocracy. In contexts of state capture or state control, the transparency costs associated with transnational law deter plutocrats from seeking resolution abroad. But when the state and the plutocracy have relatively equal power, competing interests can lead to political clashes, with different actors asserting themselves. "Losers" of these clashes, locked out of their institutions, now have less to lose from those transparency costs and so seek resolution abroad. As these elites often escape with much of their wealth abroad, "winners" respond by weaponizing transnational legal institutions to seize rivals' offshore assets and ensure defeated rivals stay defeated. Through cases from Russia and elsewhere, Dr. Kalyanpur unravels the connections between offshore finance, transnational litigation, and intra-elite warfare. He exposes how liberal courts serve as arenas for emerging market power struggles, globalizing conflicts begun at home. As billionaires continue amassing unprecedented power across democracies and autocracies alike, Legal Weapons of the Wealthy lays out how the architects of the liberal economic order defeated themselves by enabling rule by the rich. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
September 1 · 51 min
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 castellated and stone built cityscape of national revivalist architecture. It reveals why Scotland had by the 1820s become one of Europe’s great centres of Romanticism, due both to the majestic Highlands, and to Edinburgh itself as city of Romanticism. Additionally, Edinburgh developed as the main centre and hub for travellers drawn to Romantic Scotland through the work of James ‘Ossian’ Macpherson and Sir Walter Scott: visitors including Schinkel, Mozart, Verne, Turner, Haydn, amongst innumerable others. Edinburgh: City of Romanticism (Lund Humphries, 2026) by Dr. Aonghus MacKechnie also provides a long-overdue counterbalance to the contrastingly much-examined and much-published topic of Enlightenment Edinburgh, showing how this and Romantic Edinburgh have comfortably co-existed. It examines how Edinburgh’s Romanticism was similarly driven by intellectuals, amongst whom were Enlightenment figures and artistically talented individuals, and it discusses the legacy of those who contributed to the Romantic cityscape of today; an architecture that provides much of the character of the UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site and of the city that countless tourists come daily to see. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 29 · 1 hr 15 min
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 academic legitimacy and was frequently derided as 'a soft option'. Its early professors responded by emphasizing its scholarly character, foregrounding philology and literary history in ways that marked the syllabus far into the twentieth century. Stefan Collini provides here the first full account of the discipline's development from its late-eighteenth-century beginnings up to the early 1960s. Paying special attention to institutional settings, he challenges numerous assumptions about the character of universities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the detailed exploration of syllabuses, exam papers, and other institutional records, the impact of literary criticism is revealed to be later and more partial than is commonly assumed. Rather than seeing the early teaching of English literature as 'a substitute for religion' or 'a means to soften class conflict', Collini emphasizes the role of ideals of learnedness and scholarship, as well as of external factors such as opportunities for employment in the civil service and secondary school-teaching. There are full discussions of the parts played by such figures as John Churton Collins, A.C. Bradley, George Saintsbury, and Walter Raleigh, together with sceptical analyses of the decisive significance usually attributed to Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, and F.R. Leavis. Separate chapters are devoted to neglected aspects of the story such as the role of Classics, the importance of the subject for women's higher education, and the connections with English teaching in schools. Drawing on extensive use of institutional archives and records as well as the writings of contemporary participants, the book offers a vivid and wide-ranging history of English-as-discipline and its centrality across academic, literary, cultural, and educational life over the past two year hundred years, as well as a resounding testament to its continued importance and relevance today. Stefan Collini, Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature, University of Cambridge. Stefan Collini was educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Research Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge, he was Lecturer, then Reader, in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex 1974-86; Lecturer, then Reader, then Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at the University of Cambridge 1986-2014. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and Guardian. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 29 · 59 min
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 children’s literature did not merely emerge alongside the plantation economy; it was deeply shaped by it. Sugar, sweetness, moral instruction, and domestic comfort were all tied to systems of enslavement and colonial trade, even as the violence behind them was softened or erased in stories for young readers. The book also examines how ideas of white civility shaped childhood. White children, particularly girls, were cast as symbols of innocence, refinement, and moral feeling, while Black children were excluded from those same protections. Through analyses of persecuted-heroine narratives, missionary education, and colonial schooling, the study reveals how children’s literature helped normalise racial hierarchy across the British Empire. Yet the project is equally attentive to resistance and alternative ethical traditions. Afro-Caribbean oral storytelling, including Anansi tales, songs, and folktales, emerges as a powerful counterarchive. These traditions preserved histories of survival, collective memory, and resistance that colonial print culture often attempted to suppress. The discussion of the “Queen Mary” Fireburn song, for instance, highlights how storytelling became a form of ethical education and cultural continuity across generations. One of the book’s most striking contributions is its global scope. Children’s texts on slavery circulated far beyond Britain and the Caribbean, travelling to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East via missionary and imperial networks. In translation and adaptation, these works sometimes reinforced imperial ideologies, but they could also be reshaped in unexpected ways by ‘local’ readers and writers. Sugarcoated Ethics asks readers to reconsider what children’s literature teaches us about morality, empathy, and history. It challenges the assumption that childhood stories are politically neutral and invites us to think more critically about the ethical worlds children’s books continue to create today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 29 · 45 min
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 the piecemeal transplantation of British animal humanitarianism as pedigree dogs accompanied hardening class differences, dogmeat became a contested racial issue, and dogs were roped into the long list of undesirables fabricated in the so-called golden era of reforms following the social disturbances of the 1960s. Dr. Chan reveals a fragmented civilizing project that constructed dogs as dangerous, filthy, and unnecessary nuisances in a burgeoning city, rationalizing the slaughter of tens of thousands of dogs alongside paradoxical criticism of the native population for perpetrating animal cruelty and the promotion of British animal humanitarianism. Departing from anthropocentric perspectives in understanding the use of Britishness in the molding of modern cities, Savage restores the presence and agency of dogs to encourage a rethinking of the patchiness of British colonial governance and the long-lasting repercussions that modernity can have on our relationship with animals. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 28 · 54 min
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 funeral celebrants of the British Humanist Association (now called Humanists UK), the book examines how their ritual work is geared toward helping realize a secular world. There is a strong ethical commitment behind this effort, which is to face death with honesty based on the belief that this life is all we have. For the humanist celebrants and those they serve, this is what allows for a life with meaning and purpose. Written in a vivid style, the book centers on the lives and the funerals of particular people, from a three-year-old child to a man in his nineties. Anthropologist Matthew Engelke, who trained as a humanist celebrant as part of his research, describes how these officiants try to craft “sincere” funerals, avoiding language and music that might suggest that the person who died had any religious beliefs. The book also captures the highs and lows for humanist celebrants of working in the funeral business—a business that is, for many of them, a kind of vocational calling. Above all, An Honest Death draws out the tensions in secular humanist thought and practice between reason and the body, rationalism and materialism. Nothing matters more to the humanists than “daring to know” in the Enlightenment tradition, but nothing is so certainly known as the fact that we are finite and embodied creatures. Matthew Engelke is professor and chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 28 · 37 min
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. The trouble was he had been there before – in January of the same year, in fact – to do the same thing. On that occasion, however, he had shocked on-lookers by delivering an anti-Protestant tirade instead of his promised recantation. How could Tyrrell, a serial convert, who eventually changed church affiliation as many as ten times, overcome the doubts of his suspicious audience? Tyrrell and similar converts who made multiple conversions understandably aroused suspicions of hypocrisy that made the performative character of public recantation troublingly evident. Yet as Holly Pickett argues in The Drama of Serial Conversion in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), these performative elements are actually indispensable to any conversion, whether an individual’s first or fifteenth. Serial converts served as uncomfortable reminders to their contemporaries that religious identity is always unverifiable. The first study to explore serial conversion as a discrete phenomenon in this era, The Drama of Serial Conversion in Early Modern England challenges confessional divisions within much early modern historiography by analyzing the surprising convergence of Protestant and Catholic in the figure of the serial convert. It also reveals a neglected strain of religious discourse in early modern England that valued mutability and flexibility even in the midst of hardening and increasingly narrow understandings of conversion. Michael Shaw is a PhD student in Historical Theology at Union College, Belfast, and a Visiting Tutor at the Irish Baptist College. His research focuses on the thought of the Independent Puritan theologian Jeremiah Burroughs (1599–1646). His primary research interests lie in historical theology, particularly early modern Baptist and Congregationalist theology and ecclesiology. He also serves as the Associate Pastor at Strandtown Baptist Church, Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 26 · 37 min
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 an undeclared war on China in July 1937, Eden appealed to the US for help. He believed sending an Anglo-American naval force to the Western Pacific would demonstrate that the democracies were not spineless, but were prepared to stand up for what they believed in. Was this a viable alternative to Chamberlain's appeasement policy, now notorious for its failure in the face of fascism? In Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937–38 (Tithebarn Press, 2026), historian Malcolm Murfett tells the story, using a wide range of primary sources from the UK and US archives, of Eden's push to persuade Roosevelt's administration to be more assertive in the Pacific. He reveals the diplomatic dance both sides engaged in, each unsure of the other's reliability, of their own ability to commit, and tied up in their own internal struggles for policy dominance. We get a real insight into how two once-and-future allies managed each other's expectations, as well as the wider strategic parameters within which they were operating. With eerie echoes of our own times, Murfett explores the challenges involved in both international diplomacy, and foreign and security policy. How standing up for principles and values can become compromised by the requirements of Realpolitik, and logistical constraints. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 26 · 52 min
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. The book traces the emergence of a city language narrative that embraces and celebrates multilingualism and helps forge a civic identity. He critiques linguaphobic discourses at a national level that regard multilingualism as deficient citizenship. Drawing on his research in Manchester, he examines the 'multilingual utopia', looking at multilingual spaces across sectors in the city that support access, heritage, skills and celebration. The book explores the tensions between decolonial approaches that inspire activism for social justice and equality, and the neoliberal enterprise that appropriates diversity for reputational and profitability purposes, prompting critical reflection on calls for civic university engagement. Beyond telling the story of the Multilingual Manchester project, the book also offers an intriguing glimpse into the author’s distinguished career as a linguist, scholar, and activist. Reference Matras, Y. (2024). Speech and the City: Multilingualism, Decoloniality and the Civic University. Cambridge University Press. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 26 · 50 min
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 traditional economic problems but also to newer challenges posed by climate change, migration and technological change. Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next (Princeton University Press, 2026), written by Paul Johnson and coauthors, drawing on the findings of the six-year IFS Deaton Review, connects these conditions to inequality—inequality not just of income and wealth but of health, political participation and opportunity. It not only offers a detailed analysis of the different forms of inequalities but also an in-depth consideration of why inequalities matter, how they have changed and what can, or should, be done about them. The book explains the enduring effects of early life experiences and education and examines the trends in employment and earnings over recent decades. It argues that economic stagnation since the financial crises of 2008–2009 has exposed inequalities originating in the 1980s. Not only have incomes stagnated, but so has progress towards reducing health inequalities and dealing with inequalities across gender, ethnicity, geography, age and educational level. The combination of earnings inequality and economic stagnation has led to the growing importance of wealth, the increasing concentration of economic power in an older generation and a decline in social mobility. Economic inequalities have also resulted directly in dangerous differences between regions and in political power across groups. The need to address inequality has never been more urgent. Challenging Inequalities offers a road map for how we have arrived at such a perilous spot—and how we can change course to achieve better outcomes for all. Paul Johnson is provost of the Queen’s College, University of Oxford, and former director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 22 · 40 min
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 commonplace and yet the most mysterious of all chemical compounds. Liquid Faith: Scotland's Sacred and Supernatural Waters (Birlinn, 2026) by Ian Bradley is a journey from healing wells, springs, river sources and bogs to the seashore, islands and whirlpools, to discover the legends, superstitions and rituals that have grown up around them. Drawing on spirituality, philosophy and faith as well as history and tradition, Professor Bradley highlights the crucial importance of water over thousands of years, and emphasises its preciousness and vulnerability today and in the future. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 19 · 1 hr 4 min
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. Since its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, 'Europe' has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s major historical developments: the rise and fall of Rome; the explosion of Christianity; the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; the violent upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the uncertainties of the present. Throughout, original sources allow the voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves. Grappling with the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, Europe places the Europe of today in a long arc of history stretching back more than 2,500 years. Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London and Chair of Trustees of the British School at Athens, an institute of advanced research. He is a four-time winner of the Runciman Award, for his books An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature, George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel: A Biography, Byron's War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution, and Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation, published by Penguin in 2019. He is also the author of The Greeks: A Global History. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Commander of the Order of Honour of the Hellenic Republic, and an honorary citizen of Greece. He was knighted in 2025. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 19 · 1 hr 2 min
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 decades following the death of James V. It demonstrates that beyond the direct effects of invasion, the need to raise unprecedented taxation, as well as warfare’s secondary consequences, such as plague and price inflation, disrupted communities throughout Scotland, engendering enhanced social control. These effects endured for many years after the peace of 1550: new laws were passed to manage those who had collaborated with the invaders and taxation remained high. The post-war decade was one of reconstruction, and it was this which drove religious reformation in 1559-60. The book shows that appreciating the scale of the crown’s ambition places the Scottish state’s development closer to that of its European counterparts. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 19 · 59 min
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 circulated from the farms of peasant families in rural Bengal to pipes, plates, and cups elsewhere in the subcontinent. Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India (University of California Press, 2026) is an open-access book that follows the perpetual incongruity between regulatory efforts to pursue the plant through botanical observation, colonial reportage, and excise statistics and the leisurely, devotional, and creative ganja pursuits among people. Dr. Utathya Chattopadhyaya offers a social history of ganja in a multispecies framework that reveals how the cannabis plant co-constituted histories of empire, gender, subalternity, and labor under British rule. Against the weight of the criminalization and "drug-ness" of cannabis, Dr. Chattopadhyaya puts the multidirectional and polysemic history of ganja as plant matter at the center of analysis. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 17 · 45 min
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 Palestine, and the archival holdings themselves. You can browse Frank Scholten’s images here. Follow the City Sarha Instagram account to be updated on when the app exploring Jerusalem’s modern cultural history will launch. You can purchase a copy here. The book is also available Open Access here. The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and discuss their series or books. Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more. Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 16 · 1 hr 2 min
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 archipelago 100 kilometres off the Pilbara coast, and each of the three bombs sent fallout over vast distances across the country. One of the tests, Mosaic G2 in June 1956, the largest nuclear weapon test ever held in Australia, sparked panic at the time that it had been a nuclear accident. In both the Mosaic tests, the crew of a British ship was deliberately positioned in the path of fallout. The biodiverse natural environment of the islands was left contaminated and has never been cleaned up. The book explores the politics, the secrecy and the controversies, including the true nature of Mosaic G2 and its role in the clandestine development of the British hydrogen bomb. Elizabeth Tynan is professor in the Graduate Research School at James Cook University, Townsville. She is a prominent writer and researcher of the era of British atomic testing in Australia. Her book Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story (NewSouth, 2016) won the Prime Minister's Literary Award (Australian History) and the CHASS Australia Book Prize in 2017. Her follow-up book The Secret of Emu Field: Britain's Forgotten Atomic Tests in Australia was published by NewSouth in 2022. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 10 · 1 hr 1 min
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 Jung, a prominent lawyer and the scion of a leading Muslim reformist movement. In 1909, the wealthy couple embarked on a four-month journey through the Middle East and Europe, performing the hajj in Mecca and sitting for tea with the future king and queen of England. A Journey to Mecca and London: The Travels of an Indian Muslim Woman, 1909–1910 (Indiana University Press, 2025) provides the first full English translation of Begum Sarbuland's Urdu travel diary from this journey, of which only three original copies remain. Originally intended for circulation among friends and family and later published, her informal entries not only reveal the everyday practices of an Indian woman of her time, but also detail her impressions and reactions as she explored the world alongside her husband. As Begum Sarbuland encountered other women and Muslims during her travels, those encounters shaped her reassessment of her own identity as a Muslim woman. Her observations hold continued significance for readers interested in critical questions about gender, Islam, and identity. Daniel Majchrowicz has thoroughly annotated his translation and paired it with rich appendices, including a biographical sketch of Begum Sarbuland and excerpts from Hamidullah Khan's own accounts of their journey. Engagingly written and enriched with years of original research, archival work, and family interviews, A Journey to Mecca and London restores the nearly forgotten narrative of one of India's first Muslim women travel writers to its rightful place in Indian and Islamic history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 10 · 47 min
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 suggests that what the stage found most compelling about narratives of colonial settlement was their failure to claim interpretive control over unfamiliar places and people. The book goes on to link colonial misreadings of places and people to theatrical strategies for staging disorientation, which Pirri characterizes as a condition of “unsettlement.” Each chapter focuses on a specific formal device that emerged from colonial misreadings: “uncommonplacing” in Richard Hakluyt’s travel compendium; metonymic possession in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine; “seasoning” in Ben Jonson’s city comedies; “stagewreck” in Shakespeare’s The Tempest; and “stagework” in the Lord Mayor’s Shows. By approaching form as an interpretive process that is always engaged in the act of making and being made, Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form offers a model for reading past the seeming impasses of colonial narratives. It shows how narratives of failed settlement served as a productive resources for the formal worldmaking conventions of early modern theater. Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
August 8 · 1 hr 5 min
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 important, even inextricable, aspect of the movement. This is not a new dynamic—diasporic Hindutva has grown over many decades. Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism (Oxford University Press, 2024) explores how and why the movement became popular among India’s diaspora from the second half of the twentieth century. It shows that Hindutva ideology and its plethora of organizations have a distinctive resonance and way of operating overseas; the movement and its ideas perform significant, particular functions for diaspora communities. Edward T.G. Anderson argues that transnational Hindutva cannot simply be viewed as an export: this phenomenon has evolved and been shaped into an important aspect of diasporic identity, a way for people to connect with their homeland. He also sheds light on the impact of conservative Indian politics on British multiculturalism, migrant politics and relations between various minority communities. Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard’ as well as ‘soft’ power domains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

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