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|genre=History
|summary=''Berlin in the Cold War: 1959-1966'' contains almost 200 photographs taken by author/photographer Allan Hailstone in his visits to the city during this period. The images provide an insight into the changing nature of the divide between East and West Berlin and a glimpse into life in the city during the Cold War.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=Stewart_Marches
|title=The Marches
|author=Rory Stewart
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=The Observer quote on the front of the paperback edition of Stewart's latest book observes ''This is travel writing at its finest.'' Perhaps, but to call it 'travel writing' is to totally under-sell it. This is erudition at its finest. Stewart has the background to do this: he had an international upbringing and followed his father in both the Army and the Foreign Office, and then (to his father's, bemusement, shall we say) became an MP. Oh, and he walked 6,000 miles across Afghanistan in 2002. A walk along the Scottish borders should be a doddle by comparison.
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I know a lot about the subject of this book – although please don't think for one minute that is akin to a boast that I could have written it; far from it. But I too have a mountain of souvenirs here and there. They come in five kinds, don't you know – including a miniature version of what you've been to see (my porcelain Field of Miracles from Pisa, that has long since lost its miraculous ability to act as both memento and leaning hygrometer); pictorial representation, such as postcards (oh so many postcards); and physical bits of the place (a particularly Klimtian bit of stone found on a beach on Jersey only this autumn past). I am such a collector of souvenirs I get narked when I go to a place such as a cathedral and all that's on offer is religious product and nothing branded with the site, which is rich considering the whole souvenir industry came from religion and religious pilgrimage in the first place – you only need consider that in buying a souvenir you're trying to take a bit of its source home with you, and for that very reason people sought a continuance of some kind of holiness via religious artefact. You only need consider it, I say, but rest assured all that history and everything else has been considered in the making of this wonderful book. [[Souvenir (Object Lessons) by Rolf Potts|Full Review]]
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