Joad Raymond Wren

published 2 July 2026

The Guardian: a “richly diverting intellectual history of the idea” (16/06/26), review by Steven Poole.

The Spectator: “Britain’s current problem is one that the heroes of Joad Raymond Wren’s scintillating book never had: a complete want of thinking outside the box…. the book rises up as a monument against our age of short-termism. Wren writes on the last page: ‘By virtue of being a fantastical glass, utopia shows us as we are not… Even here in the world that utopians reject, utopia never stops challenging us to reconsider where we stand.’ Utopias, that is to say, are not places where you might want to live but imaginative challenges to the status quo, to the prevailing nonsense that things have always been done this stupid way and must continue to be so until the last syllable of recorded time.” (02/07/26), review by Steven Poole.