BAVS review

Culture PhD student Philippa Abbott has published a review in the newsletter of the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS). She looks at Victorian Popular Culture (a website from Adam Matthew's Digital) and describes it as 'an invaluable resource to any researcher or teacher with an interest in popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries'; one which brings together resources which would otherwise be difficult to access.

Discourse and democracy

Culture PhD student Maria Fotiadou has had a review of Michael Farrelly's Discourse and Democracy: Critical Analysis of the Language of Government (Routledge, 2015) published in Critical Discourse Studies.

Changing attitudes to transracial adoption

Dr Peter Hayes has published a review essay in the journal Adoption Quarterly (Volume 17, Issue 2). The books he reviews - Adversity, Adoption and Afterwards and Rethinking Matching in Adoptions from Care - question, according to Peter, widely held beliefs about the efficacy of professional attempts at 'matching' between potential adopters and adoptees.

Acclaim for historian's assisted suicide book

A review in the journal Disability & Society has described the latest book by Sunderland historian Dr Kevin Yuill as a 'timely and welcome' volume in an area often under-analysed by academics. Susie Balderston, from the Law School at Lancaster University suggests that Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case against Legalization (Palgrave, 2013) 'maturely delineates a consistently well-argued path through the thorny discrepancies of polarised debates, past and present'. Balderston maintains that the author 'has a refreshing talent for injecting readability into thorny subjects', and concludes her review by stating that the volume is 'by far the best book on this subject in many years; the author should be proud of this important volume that brilliantly and eloquently tackles injustice and prejudice around assisted suicide'.

Kevin Yuill's Assisted Suicide reviewed

A review of Kevin Yuill's latest book - Assisted Suicide: The Liberal Humanist Case Against Legalization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) - has appeared in the American journal First Things. The author (Wesley J. Smith) commends the originality of Kevin's approach, commenting favourably on the book's 'compelling humanistic argument supporting the prohibition of doctor-prescribed death.'

Ian Ground reviews new work on Wittgenstein

Portrait of Ludwig Wittgenstein by Ben Richards

A review by Dr Ian Ground (NECLL) of two recent books about Ludwig Wittgenstein (Paul Horwich's Wittgenstein’s Metaphilosophy, and Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Mind edited by Jonathan Ellis and Daniel Guevara) has appeared in this week's Times Literary Supplement.