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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Susie Mesure |Mathew Lyons |Anne Sebba |Christopher Sandford
Beartooth, the second novel by the Montana-based writer Callan Wink, opens with two brothers elbow-deep in the viscera of the third black bear they have just shot out of season. Hazan’s hands are “moving around the hot insides of the animal as if he were rummaging through a junk drawer.” He wants the gallbladder, which will fetch around $1,500 — far more than the brothers get for chopping firewood. The skull, claws and skin will swell their illegal bounty by another $500.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Mathew Lyons |Christopher Sandford |Octavia Sheepshanks |Amelia Butler-Gallie
Fans of that beloved British cultural institution Doctor Who are wont to talk about “their” doctor — that is, which iteration of the character was their entry point to the franchise. The same might be said of fans of Neil Innes, the much-loved songwriter, musician and comedian who died in 2019, aged seventy-five.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
spectator.com.au | Mathew Lyons
The Sound of Utopia: Musicians in the Time of Stalin Pushkin Press, pp.336, 25 At around 9 p.m. on 5 March 1953 Sergei Prokofiev died of a brain haemorrhage on the sofa of his Moscow flat. He was 61, and had struggled for years with ill health. He had long complained of pain in his soul. Less than an hour later, the source of that pain, Joseph Stalin, died of a heart attack in his dacha on the outskirts of Moscow.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
spectator.co.uk | Mathew Lyons
At around 9 p.m. on 5 March 1953 Sergei Prokofiev died of a brain haemorrhage on the sofa of his Moscow flat. He was 61, and had struggled for years with ill health. He had long complained of pain in his soul. Less than an hour later, the source of that pain, Joseph Stalin, died of a heart attack in his dacha on the outskirts of Moscow. Prokofiev’s death wasn’t so much forgotten as ignored.
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
mathewlyons.substack.com | Mathew Lyons
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
mathewlyons.substack.com | Mathew Lyons
Helen is a medieval and early-modern historian. She studied history at Cambridge, where she taught for a number of years before dedicating herself to writing full-time. Her previous books include Blood & Roses, a magnificent and prize-winning account of the Paston family; She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England before Elizabeth; and Joan of Arc. She is a both a fellow commoner of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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Jan 1, 2025 | 
historytoday.com | Mathew Lyons
On the evening of 13 January 1884, the congregation of Llantrisant were making their way home from church when they saw flames climbing in the darkness from a nearby hilltop. Villagers raced there to find 83-year-old archdruid Dr William Price, clad in a white robe, chanting medieval Welsh over a burning petrol barrel. But what was that other smell amid the fumes? A policeman kicked the barrel over. Out tumbled the charring body of a five-month-old boy.
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Jan 1, 2025 | 
historytoday.com | Mathew Lyons
It was a bitter winter: rivers were frozen, trains derailed, newspapers undelivered. But listeners to the BBC on the evening of Saturday 16 January 1926 were in for a bigger shock. A talk on 18th-century literature was followed by a news bulletin. London, listeners heard, was under siege from a mob of the unemployed. The National Gallery was being sacked, the announcer said – before switching to the weather. Moments later, an update.
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Dec 10, 2024 | 
historytoday.com | Mathew Lyons
At first, after Eleanor Roosevelt’s husband Franklin died in 1945, she had no thoughts of taking on any official duties. She ‘would rather be chloroformed’, she said. But in time she softened. Her husband’s successor, Harry S. Truman, appointed her to the US delegation to the first assembly of the new United Nations. She was the only woman on the delegation. Her male colleagues described her as strident, schoolmarmish and shrill.
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Dec 9, 2024 | 
historytoday.com | Mathew Lyons
The earliest representation of the turkey in Europe is ‘a turkey-cock in his pride proper’, requested by the Yorkshireman William Strickland when he applied for his family’s coat of arms in 1550. Can it be true, as tradition has it, that it was he who introduced the bird to England? Strickland was the son of a sea captain from Marske in the North Riding and he is said to have sailed himself as a captain with Sebastian Cabot and brought the turkeys home.
