We Must Begin with the Land

Review: We Must Begin with the Land: Seeking Abundance and Liberation through Social Ecology by Stephen E. Hunt (Zer0 books, 2025) Environmentalists find themselves in the paradoxical situation of living in a golden age of radical ecological thinking – even as our global economic system blasts through one climactic tipping-point after another, more or less … Read more

Review: The Occupant by Jennifer Maier

How would you feel upon discovering the objects of your daily, habitual use—ordinary objects of every imaginable function and variety—were inspirited, sensitively keen observers with their own desires, gripes, preoccupations, and ways of understanding the world? This is precisely the brain-tickling puzzle Jennifer Maier’s newly-released third collection The Occupant (University of Pittsburgh Press) shakes, opens, … Read more

John Betjeman’s Love Affair with Ireland

The colourful humourist and English poet laureate, Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) is the subject of Dominic Moseley’s Betjeman in Ireland (Somerville Press, 2023), which is lavishly illustrated with photographs. Betjeman, who took his teddy bear, Alfie with him to Oxford in 1925 was the inspiration for the character of Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead … Read more