Jonathan Parry

Jonathan Parry teaches 19th-century history at Cambridge. His short history of British political liberalism is out now.

Every Mother’s Son: Britain in Sudan

Jonathan Parry, 24 July 2025

The publication​ of The Four Feathers in 1902 established A.E.W. Mason’s reputation as a writer of adventure stories. Over the next forty years, the book sold nearly a million copies. The plot turns on Harry Feversham’s receipt of four white feathers accusing him of cowardice for refusing to enlist in Britain’s military campaign in Egypt in 1882. Subsequently, he attempts...

One​ can imagine the dilemma this sound narrative history posed to a publisher looking for a catchy title. Even so, The First Cold War is an unhelpful one. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain and Russia did not seek to divide the world between them and very rarely pointed weapons at each other. Russia fought almost two dozen wars after 1783, but only the Crimean War of 1854-56 and the...

Snobs, Swots and Hacks

Jonathan Parry, 23 January 2025

When we think​ of the fashions of the 1890s, several objects come to mind: the tennis racquet, the golfing cap, the Daily Mail, a full-length Singer Sargent portrait, The Diary of a Nobody. In 1896, A. & C. Black purchased the rights to a dull annual almanac called Who’s Who and relaunched it the following year in a format designed to appeal to contemporary taste. The original

In​ 1863 extracts from the journal of the Hon. Impulsia Gushington were published under the title Lispings from Low Latitudes. Impulsia had joined the fad for Egyptian travel and enjoyed an English lady’s usual adventures with camels, pyramids and cunning Orientals. Finally, she fell for the charms of a French aristocrat, Monsieur de Rataplan, and a sequel was promised that would...

Life on Sark: Life on Sark

Jonathan Parry, 18 May 2023

The quirkiest​ of the British Isles is a self-governing jurisdiction between Guernsey and France just over three miles long and less than two miles wide. Sark has its own parliament, its own taxes and its own traffic laws (permitting only tractors, bikes and horse-drawn vehicles). Its central, fertile plateau is protected by cliffs on almost all sides that rise to over three hundred feet....

Swank and Swagger: Deals with the Pasha

Ferdinand Mount, 26 May 2022

The Ottoman regime allowed the British considerable latitude so long as they didn’t directly threaten Ottoman interests. The British themselves only slowly realised quite how lucky they were in having...

Read more reviews

What Gladstone did

G.R. Searle, 24 February 1994

This impressive study of Victorian politics is built around a challenging thesis: that Gladstone, far from being the creator of the Liberal Party, was in fact a maverick who stumbled into the...

Read more reviews

Sacred Crows

John Skorupski, 1 September 1983

The culture, of the first fifty years or so of this century – ‘Modernism’ – comes increasingly to be seen in historical perspective: as a period of the past with its own...

Read more reviews

Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.

Sign up to our newsletter

For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

Newsletter Preferences