Philip Howell, "Pub" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Since the release of Jordan Peele's Academy Award-winning horror hit Get Out (2017), interest in Black horror films has erupted. This renewed intrigue in stories about Black life, history, culture, or "Blackness" has taken two forms. First, the history and politics of race have b ...  Show more

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, is known for his outfits. Since rising to become India’s head of government in 2014, photographers and journalists have long followed his clothing styles, each saying something about India. It’s part of a long tradition of using clothing to ...  Show more

The pub is an English institution. Yet its history has been obscured by myth and nostalgia. In Pub (Bloomsbury, 2025) a new addition to the Object Lessons series, Dr. Philip Howell takes the public house as an object, or rather as a series of objects: he takes the pub apart and e ...  Show more

How did ideas of masculinity shape the British legal profession and the wider expectations of the white-collar professional? Brotherhood of Barristers: A Cultural History of the British Legal Profession, 1840–1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Ren Pepitone examines th ...  Show more

Deeping It: Colonialism, Culture & Criminalisation of UK Drill (404 Ink, 2023) by Adèle Oliver shines a critical light on UK drill and its fraught relationship with the British legal system. Intervening on current discourse steeped in anti-Blackness and moral panic, this Inkling ...  Show more

In this episode, Violet Manners is joined by Dr Tristram Hunt, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and former MP, for a wide-ranging conversation about the role of museums in public life. They discuss how institutions like the V&A are evolving in the 21st century - from ad ...  Show more