In the TLS this week…

Some interesting books in the TLS this week:

Netflix, The Chair.  [Reviewed by Patricia A. Matthew.  A tv drama set in a US English department and focused on tensions created by race and tenure decisions.  Stars Sandra Oh as the chair.]

Tristram Hunt, The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgewood and the transformation of Britain [Reviewed by Keith Thomas.  Engaging biography of the eighteenth century industrialist and artist Josiah Wedgewood, who made a fortune and changed the artistic tastes of a country that was starting to drink a lot more tea and developing more sophisticated rituals surrounding its consumption.  The biography is written by Tristram Hunt, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who used to be MP for Stoke, which Wedgewood did much of his work.  Hunt had been involved in efforts to save the Wedgewood collection as an MP, and this biography would seem to be an outcome of that interest. 

Minouche Shafik, What we owe each other: a new  social contract; Ed Miliband GO BIG: How to fix our world; Ian Goldin: From global crisis to a better world.  [Reviewed by Ann Peteitfor.  Three books proposing ways to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.  It sounds like Ed Milibands book is the most genuinely radical, and takes into account the challenge that global warming poses to the doctrine of constant growth, whereas the other two are more orthodox in their approach.  Minoche Shafik is director of the LSE, so probably no surprise she is an economic liberal.]