IN A YEAR THAT HAS SEEN MORE HISTORY in the making than most, several outstanding books have come from our historians. Sir Noel Malcolm’s Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1750 (OUP, £25) upends almost everything the academic world thought we knew about the subject. Malcolm demolishes Foucault’s hitherto dominant distinction between sodomy as an act and homosexuality as an identity, offering instead a far more nuanced account of the evolution of same-sexual experience and its modes. It is rare to find such a combination of original and polyglot research, moral courage and crisply elegant prose.
● SIR CHRISTOPHER CLARK’S REVOLUTIONARY Spring: Fighting for a New World, 1848-1849 (Penguin, £30) traverses well-trodden ground, but makes audible the voices of witnesses who had hitherto been drowned out — in particular,…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December/January 2025