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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=R I MooreEdward W Said|title=The War On Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe|rating=4|genre=History|summary=At the end of the first millennium, Western Europe was a place which had barely ever encountered heresy. It took just a couple of centuries for it to become a major problem in the eyes of church leaders, leading to the persecution of individuals and groups. Was heresy such a fast-growing problem? In this volume, R I Moore provides a thoughtful analysis Representations of the issues and makes a powerful case that many supposed heretics were merely victims of a paranoid church which created propaganda to justify so many deaths.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681960</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Julius Norwich|title=The Popes: A HistoryIntellectual

|genre=HistoryPolitics and Society|summary=Historian [[:Category:John Julius Norwich|John Julius Norwich]] (or Rt Hon/Viscount John Julius Norwich, to give him his full title) doesn't write the sort of history books one associates with school days. He doesnEdward Said't do dry and dusty. In fact s ''The Popes: A History'' isn't ''justRepresentations of the Intellectual'' is less a history book but strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a romp through passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the ages with some great trivia nuggets scattered throughout comfortable image of the informative goldintellectual as a detached expert speaking only to other specialists. Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and unpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565870</amazonuk>1804272248

{{newreview|author=Emma Smith|title=The Cambridge Shakespeare Guide|rating=5|genre=Home and Family|summary=Does the world need another guide to ShakespeareWomen in Dark Times is Jacqueline Rose's plays? There are plenty about and students these days have the added resource homage to courageous women throughout history, particularly women of the Internet to get the basics21st, 20th and 19th centuries. HoweverHer historical and political backdrop is, thus, if expansive, yet she navigates it does, then this is as good as any you will find. Itwith intelligence and an acknowledgment that feminism's nicely written and beautifully clear and above all, succinct. In fact I'm doing lengthy mission is a disservice testament to Emma Smith already by terming it a guide to his playsits successes, because she also includes and not its failures: ''the poems and sonnetsongoing force of feminism''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>052114972X</amazonuk>1804271713

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter AckroydMary McCarthy|title=London UnderMemories of a Catholic Girlhood

|genre=HistoryAutobiography|summary=Peter Ackroyd is already well-known Mary McCarthy describes herself as a historian of London. As a kind of adjunct an ''amateur architect'', obsessively digging into the past to his mammoth work on piece together the city, here we have a comparatively slender tome on one specific aspectbroken mosaic of her life. Underneath She attributes her ''burning interest in the city is a world of its ownpast'' to her orphanhood, of springsas she lacked any second-hand memories from her parents, streamswho died in the 1918 flu epidemic. This memoir chronicles her early years, Roman amphitheatres, Victorian sewersbeginning with her orphanhood in Minneapolis, gang hideoutsMinnesota, where she lived under the creatures which have dwelt in its darkness from rats harsh guardianship of her late father's Irish Catholic parents and eels to monsters her abusive Uncle Myers and hostsAunt Margaret. Later, she moved to Seattle to live with her maternal grandparents—her grandmother being Jewish and last but not least her grandfather Presbyterian—who provided her with a different kind of upbringing.|isbn=1804271659}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=Charging Around: Exploring the modern Underground railway system.Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=5|genre=Travel|amazonuksummary=<amazonuk>0099287374</amazonuk>Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter AckroydB09BLBP3P8|title=LondonNeville Chamberlain's War: The Concise BiographyHow Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager

|summary=As Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the case with his recent volume on Charles Dickensscrubbing from the popular imagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40, Ackroydknown as the 's London is an abridged version of 'Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in to save the full book originally published twelve years agoday. NeverthelessVery little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, at over 600 pages of fairly close print as Frederic Seager argues in paperbackthis book, it is still a very full readwas of vital significance in how the war played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570386</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=David Stafford|title=Mission Accomplished: SOE and Italy 1943 - 1945|rating=3Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that.5|genre=History|summary=The work He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of the secret services is always going to be shadyControl Data Company, CDC, dark and murkyfor whom he worked. Books like David StaffordIt's Mission Accomplished: SOE and Italy 1943 - 1945 make an effort to shine a light on the shadows and bring the facts into view. Stafford's admirably honest introduction claims that he has 'done [his] best to ensure that what appears here is accurate and truthful'fascinating tale, but reminds his reader that 'history is indeed intrinsically messy'; even more so when his sources were writing with secrecy told in minda mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531836</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul BushkovitchJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=A Concise History of RussiaFritz and Kurt|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=Russia's recent historyWe start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, especially since doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the end of empty market place, helping the Cold Warneighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has been so full of new developments that there is probably little if any limit to make sure the number of fresh histories lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the market can absorbSabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. This most recentBut this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, from a Professor and instead of History at Yale University, take having a little over 450 pages national vote to tell keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the story from round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the earliest days younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of Kiev Rusan evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the territory which was same train to become Buchenwald and the ancestor of stone quarry there. And us wondering how the present nation state around titular event for the 10th century AD, to Vladimir Putin's assumption adult variant of office as President in 2000.all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0521543231</amazonuk>024156574X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chil RajchmanJohn Henry Phillips|title=Treblinka: A Survivor's MemoryThe Search

|summary=Here comes yet another Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book about is a case of the Holocaustlatter, and yet another with more than enough damning indictment as our author promises to locate the topic of those events and their perpetratorsthe titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, with the target might not exist any more than enough horrific reportage to make your blood run cold– oh, and with more than enough distinguishing features to make it a necessary purchase's underwater, when he cannot dive. The latter is partly down Latching on to where it came from a particular D- while Dachau started out as a camp for political prisonersDay veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and Auschwitz I was a work camp based round barrack blocks that you can squint at and see a bad private school, this is coming from Treblinka, which he was constructed purely and simply lucky to killsurvive when it sank from beneath him. It has rightly been called The secondary aim is to erect a 'conveyer-belt executioner's block'memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849163995</amazonuk>1472146182

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Johanna AdorjanB09F4CTKJR|title=An Exclusive LoveFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer

|genre=BiographyHistorical Fiction|summary=This moving memoir tells of It's the double suicide of both István (a Hungarian-Jewish form later stages of Stephen) World War I and his wife Vera one Sunday morning in Octoberthe United States has just entered the conflict. The story Petrol Petronus is told by their granddaughter, Joanna Adorján a young American who has signed up and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with Vera, with whom joined the author shares many characteristics17 Aero Squadron. The story begins with This company was the systematic persecution of such Hungarian Jews first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Budapest under Canada, the Nazi occupation and describes their perilous flight first to be attached to Denmark after the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956. It ends with RAF and the police reports of first to be sent into the duty officer dated 15.10.91 with skies to fight the discovery of their bodies Germans in their bungalow in the Charlottenlundactive combat. But before that can happen, a town of Petrol has to master flying the Capital Region of Denmark. Entry is gained by a local locksmith who charged 297.02 kroner. It is the charm and lyricism with which this tale is related which makes this fateful, haunting and profoundly moving story about identity both sad and memorablenotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552671</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Loades0578761718|title=The Tudors: Inspiring History of a DynastySpecial Relationship|author=Nancy Carver

|summary=For several years David Loades has written and published extensively about The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the TudorsCity of London from at least 1181, individually and collectivelywhen it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, from almost every angle possible. This title is not a chronological biography or history of the five monarchs whose reigns gave their name to original church was destroyed in the eraGreat Fire of London in 1666. As he and his publisher make clear It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the prefacefire and then survived for centuries until World War II, when it is rather a study of Tudor policieswas again ruined by bombs during the Blitz.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441136908</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Francesca Beauman|title=Shapely Ankle PreferrBut that wasn'dt the end of its story: A History of after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the Lonely Hearts Advertisement|rating=5|genre=History|summary=You might think stones from the Lonely Hearts ad a trivial matterchurch's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. You might think it should appear in lower case and not be capitalisedThere, but you'd be in disagreement with Ms Beaumanthe grounds of Westminster College, who gives a big L the church was rebuilt and today serves as a big H memorial to it every time she writes of it in her survey of its history. What's more, she gets to write about a lot more than just the contents of the adverts in this brilliant bookWinston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009951334X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roman Krznaric1784385166|title=The WonderboxThird Reich in 100 Objects: Curious Histories A Material History of How to LiveNazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse

|summary='How should we liveWhat is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute?' asks author Roman Krznaric. To answer this ancient question, he looks The gate to history. 'I believe that the future a concentration camp? None of the art these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of living can be found by gazing into the pastThird Reich', he sayss fascist regime in all its iniquity. But some objects and images from that time may be less familiar to you. Creating a book which is as full of curiosities as a Renaissance 'Wunderkammer'In this short volume, he Roger Moorhouse has a stab at attempted to illustrate the period of the big questions: love, belief, money, family, death. The result is a pot-pourri Third Reich through one hundred of delights which left this particular reader stimulated and invigoratedits material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683939</amazonuk> 

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=James PalmerLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=The Death of MaoTiananmen 1989: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New ChinaOur Shattered Hopes

|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=Welcome to China, where I never really followed the populous are busy leaving a rural country full events of prosperous mineral resources and coal mines, and shoddily-built hydro-electric dams Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in environmentally dubious locations, for the burgeoningsecond half of their teens has other priorities, mechanised citiesyou know. But this isnI certainly didn't the birth know of 2012, it's the dawn weeks of 1976. Chairman Mao is dying, Premier Zhou Enlai has just died, protests and hunger strikes from the cauldron of power is being stirred as never students before. Among the momentous events massacre and the birth of the year however will be Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a huge earthquake directly centred on the city of Tangshanvenue for political protest, which will kill something like two thirds of and I didn't know more than a million spit about the peopleinvolved on either side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571243991</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Phillip Thomas Tucker|title=Exodus From the Alamo|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Remember the Alamo!  The war-cry of generations of Americans This book is based upon the idea of practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the hugely outnumbered defenders whole season of the Texan mission against the marauding Mexicans standing protests back in defence of an ideal until death1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1612000762</amazonuk>1684056993

 {{newreview|author=Louise Foxcroft|title=Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=We’re in that post-Christmas period when all the socialising and indulging is over and all you’re left with is a pasty, bloated, over-fed but under-nourished complexion, a wardrobe full of clothes just a little too tight and a new year’s resolution to Get Healthy. So it’s the perfect time for a new diet book to hit the shelves. The title of this one might make you think it’s going to be full of useful tips, and the cover does little to dispel this idea, groaning as it is with the weight of plump jellies, lavish cupcakes and even a decadent lobster or two, but take a moment to note the subtitle, if you will: '''a history of dieting over 2000 years'''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684250</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kenneth D Alford and Theodore P Savas0648684806|title=Nazi MillionairesClara Colby: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold |rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=We are all doubtless aware of the six million or so dead at the hands of the Nazis, both through death camps and death squads. We are all probably conscious that before they were taken to the forests to be shot, or to the train station, never to be seen again, the Jewish and other communities captured in the Holocaust were ransacked for everything they had. It started early, of course, with the denial of rights for Jewish people to own businesses, then houses, paintings, other valuables, cash - and in the end their own gold dental fillings. The story of what happened to everything is as complex as retelling the ends of six million people, but this book opens up several windows on to those stories, through the more notable examples.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149350</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewInternational Suffragist|author=Sarah Bradford|title=Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our TimesJohn Holliday

|summary=As The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies good education, both in and out of school. She was the Queen (published only child in 1996), of the household and her father George VIchildhood was glorious. By contrast, and her daughter-family had become pioneer farmers inthe mid-law Dianawest of the United States and life was hard, Sarah Bradford needs little introductionas Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. At around 260 pages of textClara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, this is barely half the length of her other titleshad ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and probably aimed more at died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the general reader with an eye eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on the Diamond Jubilee marketClara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>067091911X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Denise Kiernan1783784350|title=Signing Their Rights Away|rating=4|genre=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|summary=Many Americans believe that the Declaration of Independence is the cornerstone of the American democracy, the fountain-head of the American Way of Life and the American Dream. The 4th of July is the national holiday and often thought to be the single most important date in American history.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>159474520X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Toby Lester|title=Da Vinci's Ghost: The untold story of Vitruvian ManEsther Rutter|rating=45

|summary=As It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the number length and breadth of popular non-fiction titles growsthe British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the authors story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscape. She'd grown up on the hunt for newa sheep farm in Suffolk -book material often use a ''concepta free-range child on the farm'' approach- and learned to spin, trying to come up with an USP for a new titleknit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This uniqueness is often achieved by adopting an obscure subject, or an unusual perspective from which to view a popular themewas in her blood. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684544</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neil Monnery1789017977|title=Safe As Houses? A Historical Analysis of Property PricesRonnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams

|summary=Neil Monnery Ronnie Williams was asked to become a trustee the son of a local charity with most of its assets in local residential propertyThomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. Over the years this had yielded good results and the charity was concerned There's some doubt as to whether or not they should continue on the same basis were ever married or diversify even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and Monnery said that he would look into thismight well have shaved a few years off his age. That discussion For a while the family was the genesis for this book as he began quite well-to research the history of house prices – -do but disaster struck in the UK 1929 Depression and elsewhere – for as far back as five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he could go did inherit from his father was his need to establish whether or not house were, be well, as safe as houses-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907994017</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Wilson1980891117|title=Shadow of the Titanic|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Lesson one G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in writing non-fiction articles and journalism seems to be to find out what is topical. April 2012 is the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, and there are going to be hoards of people finding it topical to celebrate that. Lesson two seems to be to find your own unique angle on the story. Wilson approaches the Titanic disaster by sinking her at the end of chapter one, for he looks more at the lives life of the people on board, and how they took the calamity and dealt with it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847377300</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGeorge Engleheart|author=Peter Englund|title=The Beauty and the Sorrow: An intimate history of the first world warJohn Webley

|genre=HistoryArt|summary=In simple terms George Engleheart was one of the First World War, like most (if not all) conflicts has come down to us largely as a four-year sequence of events, an acknowledgement leading portrait miniaturists of defeat by one sideGeorgian London, and with a peace agreementcareer lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. Yet there are many different ways He was also one of telling its historythe most prolific, and as Englund tells us in his prefacepainting nearly 5, this is not a book about what it '''was''', but about what it was '''like'''000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Though a series Throughout most of snapshots in words, that time he shows us various stages carefully recorded the names of the conflict each of his clients, and its effect on people. His emphasis subsequently transcribed them into what is not so much events and processes, but more the feelings, impressions, experiences and moods of individuals caught up in the period.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683424</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Paul Oppenheimer|title=Machiavelli: A Life Beyond Ideology |rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Machiavelli, 'the first philosopher referred to define politics as treachery', has probably been better known as an adjective, Machiavellian being a synonym for duplicity in statecraft, than as a historical person. Interestingly, the term 'Machiavel' became common in English usage as an adjective and noun around 1570, although none of his works were translated into the language for another seventy years or so after thatfee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847252214</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Clarissa Dickson Wright1789016304|title=War and Love: A History family's testament of English Foodanguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin

|summary=Writing a history of English food, Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and to some extent drinkwas entranced by what she discovered, must be a daunting task, but as an experienced TV presenter (as one particularly in ''The Diary of the Ann Frank''Two Fat Ladies'but then realised that her own family' s stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Most people believed that the late Jennifer Paterson) and as one occupation could never happen: even those who was born thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the post-war rationing world in 1947way that it did, Clarissa Dickson Wright is well placed to do sobut initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905211856</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Art Spiegelman1908745819|title=MetaMAUS|rating=5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Before the Holocaust was turned into [[The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne|a child-like near-fable for all]], and before it was the focus of superb history books such as [[Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder|this]], it became a family saga of a father relating his experiences to a son, who then drew it all - featuring animals not humans - [[Maus by Art Spiegelman|Maus]]. To celebrate the twenty-five years since then, we have this brilliant look back at the creation of an equally brilliant volume.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916838</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSurfacing|author=Philip Ardagh|title=Philip Ardagh's Book of Kings, Queens, Emperors and Rotten Wart-Nosed Commoners|rating=3.5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=If you deem a good children's historical trivia book to be one that tells you, the adult, something they didn't know about historical trivia, then this is a good example. I didn't know George V broke his pelvis when his horse fell on him, startled by some post-WWI huzzahs. I didn't know Charles VI of France nearly got torched in some drunken bacchanal. The length of time Charlemagne sat on a throne (over 400 whole years (even if he wasn't wholly whole all that time)) was news to me, as was the raffle that was held (more or less) for being the unknown soldier. Therefore this is a good book for children and the adults willing to instill some historical trivia into them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330471732</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Timothy Snyder|title=Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and StalinKathleen Jamie

|summary=The first chapter is enoughSometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. I don't mean the prefaceMostly we take them at their word, or introduction, that mean you start reading chapter one about an hour innot, but chapter one itself, detailing as rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it does turns out that we didn't like the way Stalin blatantly enforced collectivization on Ukrainebook. That's farmsa rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, thus killing off millions of local civiliansrarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The seed stock ended up being taken away as part blurb speaks of the grain quota to feed the rest author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of the Soviet Union, and hardly anybody failed to go without at some point as herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a resultbad description of where I am. The first chapter hereAdd to that my love of the natural world, then, is more than enough in telling us what we didn't know, explaining perfectly lucidly yet academically how of those aspects of the poetic and why what happened happenedlyrical that are about style not form, and at times substance most of quite gruesome anecdote and contemporary reportageall, churning our stomachs and making us have second thoughts about reading connection. Of course, this book had my name onit. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551799</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Paxman0857058320|title=Empire: What Ruling Lord Of All the World Did to the BritishDead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)|rating=54

|summary=In ''Lord Of All the 21st century, Dead'' is a journey to uncover the British Empire may be an anachronism, something for which hand-wringing politicians author's lost ancestor's life and church leaders may be ever ready to apologisedeath. Many of us have grown up just as the last imperial remnants were crumbling away. Yet its legacy Cercas is everywhere, and searching for better or worse will always be part of the very fabric of Britainmeaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. As Jeremy Paxman demonstrates in this excellent overviewManuel Mena, published as a curtain-raiser to his series on the subjectCercas' great uncle, it is never very far away from usthe figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. After a period of trying to distance ourselves from it, we seem to be Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the verge centre of coming this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to terms with the simple truth that it was not so bad as it has sometimes been painted. Moreover, it should be remembered that even if Britain emerged from the Second World War battered and broke, it still possessed sufficient imperial presence to become one of the Permanent Five on a hero whilst having fought for the United Nations Security Councilwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919578</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sam Willis0008294011|title=How to Lose a Country: The Glorious First of June: Fleet Battle in the Reign of Terror|rating=5|genre=History|summary=To be frank, I was not expecting a lot 7 Steps from this account of a famous maritime battle. Marine warfare histories can be rather dull, with lists of ships and mind-numbing detail that may appeal if you have an intimate knowledge of a warship's anatomy, but quite deathly for the rest of us. But I was gripped from the first page Democracy to the last by this really insightful account not just of the battle but of the whole political and historical events which inspired it. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849160384</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDictatorship|author=John Julius Norwich|title=A History of England in 100 Places: From Stonehenge to the GherkinEce Temelkuran

|summary=There are many different ways of telling the history of England (indeed just England, not Wales and Scotland, as the author makes clear). This takes A little while ago a very simple and very effective approach friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to the matter, come would be discussed by focusing on a hundred specific places which somehow illustrate A level history students when faced with the nationquestion ''s progress from prehistoric times Discuss the factors which led to today, in chronological order.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848546068</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nancy Mitford|title=The Sun King|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Nancy Mitford assumes ..'' I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that youwe didn'll need no introduction t know what all 'this' was leading to Louis XIV, who ascended the throne when he was four years old and reigned for well over seventy two years. To put him in context his reign began before Charles I was executed in Whitehall, lasted through the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, the reigns of Charles think now that I, James II, William III and into the beginning of the reign of Queen Annedo know. He bridged the gap between the middle ages We are in danger of losing democracy and the early modern era.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528886</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stephen Owhilst it'Shea|title=The Friar of Carcassonne: Revolt Against the Inquisition in the Last Days of the Cathars|rating=4|genre=History|summary=It starts with s a painting. The painting isnflawed system I can't the point: the subject is. In the Autumn think of 1319 a Franciscan Friar stands before his accusers. Entitled ''L'Agitateur du Languedoc'' the artwork portrays the trial of Bernard Délicieuxbetter one, particularly as the eponymous Friar of Carcassonne. Although O'Shea veers clear of telling us the outcome of the trial, one cannot help feeling that it wasnbenevolent dictator' is as rare as hen't an acquittal. Such things tended not to go down in history quite so resoundingly. Not in those dayss teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668319X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew Kelly1788037812|title=Finding PolandThe Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson

|summary=Looking at any historical map of Poland anyone may see how its borders have changed over the centuries. Where will you find Originally passed in 1885, the Polish home? One answer must be law that it is founded deep had made homosexual relations a crime remained in the hearts of the Polish people who fought place for the liberty 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the integrity nature of the Polish homelandhomosexuality appeared. Now consider the promontory of land around VilniusThey were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, or Wilno as it was then known, which was contained inside Poland in 1921well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. It was an area in which Exploring the small market town margins of Hruzdowa, comprising some 52 buildings society and just large enough to warrant a town hall, studying homosexuality was situated. These wild borderlands – known as common on the Kresy - were fought over for centuries by AustriansEuropean Continent, Russians, Belarusiansbut barely talked about in the UK, Ukrainians and Lithuanians. It was here that Matthew Kelly's great-grandfather, who had imbibed so the values and élan publications of the dashing officer class, Rafal Ryzewscy, came to teach with his clever young wife, Hanna. They these men were deeply committed hugely significant – contributing to progress through education and to peaceably raising their two little daughters. However, the dreadful and calamitous year scientific understanding of 1939homosexuality, was approaching when Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland in the most cynical pact.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515997</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mick Conefrey|title=How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt: A Handbook for beginning the Lady Adventurer|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=Scott, Amundsen, Bleriot, Stanley and Livingstone, John Glenn, et all - any child should be drummed out of school if they can't name half a dozen explorers, travel pioneers and adventurers. But give them a gold star if they can name a single female entrant to history's list. Hence this book, struggle for while some mountains have been topped by a lady first of all, recognition and some landmark achievements by the guys have been quickly followed by the galsequality, there is just too much ground leading to be made up in recognising what the fairer milestone legalisation of same-sex have done relationships in the world of, well, going round our world1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688412</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|author=David Bennett|title=A Magnificent Disaster: The Failure of the Market Garden, the Arnhem Operation, September 1944|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Operation Market Garden, September 1944 is encapsulated for most people in the Hollywood movie "A Bridge Too Far" which, like most movies, gets some of it right and some of it wrong.  Such anyway is Bennett's assessment. So what is the true story of what one Major Norton called a magnificent disaster, perhaps consciously echoing that judgement on the charge of the Light Brigade in a far earlier conflict "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre"?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>193514989X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lynn Peril1910593508|title=Swimming in the Steno Pool: A Retro Guide to Making It in the Office|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=The subtitle of this book suggests a survival guide to secretarial work. However, this is definitely not a handbook, but an examination of the portrayal of the job and those who do it in the media and in handbooks over the last 100 years. It is an American book and all the references are to handbooks, media, popular fiction and advertising from the US, but as a secretary in Britain, I still found it relevant, interesting and very entertaining.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393338541</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewApollo|author=Niall McCrae|title=The Moon and Madness|rating=4|genre=Popular Science|summary=A book entitled ''The Moon and Madness'' has the potential to be a pile of New Age hokum. This learned and academic treatise by Niall McCrae is very far from hokumMatt Fitch, Chris Baker and there is not a whiff of New Age hanging over it. We probably all have an old folklore image in our minds of lunatics in the asylum howling at the full moon. Of course, the very word 'lunatic' has its origins in the moon. McCrae tries to separate myth and fact in this fascinating book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402146</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nigel Jones|title=TowerMike Collins

|summary=If you had This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to name one particular artefact which personifies the history Moon landings and the passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of Englandthis, it would the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to the book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be hard to choose anything more appropriate than familiar with the building which slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has at various times been trimmed. This is a castle, a palace, a prison, a torture chamber, and execution site, an armoury, graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and is now the most visited tourist attraction in the nationstill felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091936659</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Annelise Freisenbruch1786331047|title=The First Ladies of RomeRace to Save the Romanovs: The Women Truth Behind the CaesarsSecret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport

|summary=Perhaps The basic facts about the most shocking thing to be gleaned from this fascinating history deaths of the women who surrounded the Caesars is how easily their reputations were createdNicholas and Alexandra, moulded and destroyed. Any woman who put a foot out of line in a culture where men held almost all the power could be accused of a litany some of crimes which bore curious similarities with those of many another woman in similar circumstances. Incest and adultery were charges regularly levied against them, and deliberately obscured at the very fact that the details were identical in almost every case should give rise to suspicion about their accuracy. And yet history has accepted and spread these scandals as fact.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523930</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Daniel Allen Butler|title=The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathiatime for various reasons, the Californian, and the Night the Titanic Was Lost|rating=4|genre=History|summary=It's now almost a century have long since been established. For the loss last few months of their lives in Russia the ''Titanic'' former Tsar and although much has been written about almost every aspect of that dreadful night one point has remained a mystery. When the wireless operator on the 'unsinkable' Titanic radioed that the ship had hit an icebergTsarina, had too their children and few lifeboats for all passengers and was sinking fast there remaining servants were two ships held in the vicinityincreasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. Captain Arthur Rostron on the ''Carpathia'' responded to the distress signal and hastened to the Titanic's aid. But Captain Stanley Lord of the ''Californian'' did not respond. The ship's radio officer had retired for the night and Lord failed to take decisive action later that night when told about distress flares To prevent them from the Titanic. The controversy as to why the two captains should have acted so differently has raged across the intervening years.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149857</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=D R Thorpe|title=Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=The great-grandson of a crofter, and son-in-law of a Dukebeing rescued, Harold Macmillan was born in London in 1894. Despite July 1918 the well-revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to-do aristocratic background, his years as a young adult were marked by bad experiences death in the trenches circumstances which left him with lifelong war wounds, and his early service as a Conservative Member of Parliament by once the plight of the unemployed in his first constituency of Stockton. He had much news was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in common with another future Prime Minister, Winston Churchill; both had American mothers, and both were mavericks who were elected as Conservatives but refused to toe the party line too steadfastlyEurope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844135411</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Simon Jenkins|title=A Short History of England |rating=4|genre=History|summary=Most of us see history rather like a cloud. We're aware of the great mass of it, seeing some parts more clearly than others, but perhaps struggling Move on to bring it into a straight line. Some parts we will have studied at school, or read about out of interest but these parts will be balanced by other periods when we will be woefully ignorant of some of the most basic facts. I've studied the Tudors in some depth at various points in my life – but I would struggle to tell you much about the Stuarts. What was needed was a concise history of England in one volume [[Newest Home and written for the adult reader who would simply like to be more informed, but not over-burdened.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684617</amazonuk>}}Family Reviews]]