TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features All change is for the worse? Pessimists will find evidence in Joad Raymond Wren’s The Great Exchange: Making the news in early modern Europe, reviewed for the TLS by Noel Malcolm.

The news that was fit to print

Where newspapers came from By Noel Malcolm

Light of the right

A cultural conservative who paved the way for Ronald Reagan By Christopher J. Scalia

Through bushes and briars

Ancient rural skills in a modern world By Norma Clarke

Away from it all

Restfully contemplative holiday reading By Irina Dumitrescu