Archive - The Broken Compass

Review: Nonesuch by Francis Spufford

It was a joy to write about this exhilarating new fantasy for Engelsberg Ideas

Jun 17 • Mathew Lyons

The writer's bookshelf: Lucy Allen Goss

Eight questions about writers, books, and reading…

Jun 15 • Mathew Lyons

News: an exhibition in Vilnius, two literary prizes, and some summer reading

A little more miscellaneous than usual but none the worse for that…

Jun 13 • Mathew Lyons

The ten best books about the Crusades

My pick of both fiction and non-fiction titles for The Telegraph

Jun 10 • Mathew Lyons

The writer's bookshelf: Amanda Craig

Eight questions about writers, books, and reading…

Jun 8 • Mathew Lyons

The sense-haunted ground: landscape, memory and Normandy 1944

Reposted for the anniversary of D-Day.

Jun 6 • Mathew Lyons

Review: Elizabeth I: Queen & Court

A compact but powerful new exhibition at the Philip Mould Gallery

Jun 4 • Mathew Lyons

The writer's bookshelf: Samira Shackle

Eight questions about writers, books, and reading…

Jun 1 • Mathew Lyons

May 2026

Microhistories #16: the world's first international war crimes trial

A fifteenth-century precedent for the post-war prosecutions at Nuremberg

May 29 • Mathew Lyons

First sight: Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

What reviewers made of this classic novel on publication in 1926

May 27 • Mathew Lyons

The writer's bookshelf: Victoria MacKenzie

Eight questions about writers, books, and reading…

May 25 • Mathew Lyons

Walking into darkness: my father, Alzheimer’s, and the ends of life

Reposted to mark the tenth anniversary of my Dad's death

May 22 • Mathew Lyons