Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Dan Jones1785633457|title= Realm DividedCharging Around: A Year in Exploring the Life Edges of Plantagenet Englandby Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryTravel|summary= 1215 Clive Wilkinson has gone down in a history as the year of Magna Carta, travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the result idea of King John's increasingly discontented barons attempts to exert control over their wayward and stubborn monarch. John had succeeded to exploring the throne edges of England in 1199, at the end of an often turbulent centuryelectric car was not totally outrageous. His father, Henry IIIn fact, had succeeded in restoring the authority of the crown after almost twenty years of civil war between the supporters of two rival claimants to the kingdom. He had inherited it should be a challenging set on both sides of the Channelpleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, and within four years had been driven out of most of the French onesJoan, notably the duchy of Normandy. Posterity would bestow on him the unflattering nicknames 'John Softsword' and later 'John Lacklandshouldn'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781858829</amazonuk>t it?

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith JefferyB09BLBP3P8|title=1916Neville Chamberlain's War: A Global HistoryHow Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary=1916 was a pivotal year in modern Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. It witnessed One such is the Easter Rising in Dublin, scrubbing from the battles popular imagination of Verdun and the Sommeearly days of World War II from 1939-40, and known as the election of Woodrow Wilson as American President''Phoney War''. TheseWe remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and several other events described Churchill coming in to save the day. Very little time is spent on this book period in detailcultural reflections and yet, were later seen as crucial staging points Frederic Seager argues in the course this book, it was of vital significance in how the First World Warwar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408834308</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Gary Cox3756228711|title= Deep ThoughtCDC: 42 Fantastic Quotes that Define Philosophy |rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= Who really knows what ''Cogito ergo sum'' means? Yes, you may know that Descartes said it, and that it translates as 'I think, therefore I am', but what was it the French philosopher was trying to say about human existence when he said this most quotable and definitive phrase? And, for that matter, ''where'' did he say it? Was it in the seventeenth century or the eighteenth? If these are the sort of question that keep you awake at night, then Gary Cox's 'The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Deep Thought: 42 Fantastic Quotes that Define PhilosophyPhenomena'' will be a welcome addition to your library. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472567269</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Kevin Flude|title=Divorced, Beheaded, Died...: The History of Britain's Kings and Queens in Bite-Sized ChunksHans Bodmer|rating=4.5

|summary=History lives. Proof ''The history of that sweeping statement can be had in this book, and in the fact development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.'' Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that while it only reached the grand old age of six, it has had the dust brushed off it and has been reprinted – and while the present royal incumbent it ends its main narrative with has not changed, other things have. This He has quietly been updated chosen to include tell us about the reburial short, but explosive, history of Richard III in Leicesterthe Control Data Company, CDC, and seems to have been rereleased at for whom he worked. It's a perfectly apposite timefascinating tale, as only the week before I write these words the Queen has surpassed all those who came before her as our longest serving ruler. Such details may be trivia to some – especially those of us of told in a more royalist bent – and important facts to others. The perfect balance mixture of that coupling – trivia technological summary and detail – is what makes this book so worthwhilewry anecdote.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782434631</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma MarriottJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title= I Used to Know That: HistoryFritz and Kurt|rating= 4|genre= Politics and SocietyConfident Readers|summary= I've picked up a few We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things over around the empty market place, helping the yearsneighbours, most notably from English language text books while TEFLing abroad (there's nothing like an exciting lesson on Guy Fawkes being dutiful when it comes to have the synagogue choir and at a classroom of Mexicans wondering why we so love vocational school. Kurt has to celebrate make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a terrorist attack that didn't happen)light switch. But I have gapsthis is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of this I am surehaving a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and I thought sisters anxious to get a basic understanding hear word ofan evacuation to Britain or the US, wellwhile Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the basics that we titular event for the adult variant of all should know, a quick read of this book wouldn't hurt.could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782434488</amazonuk>024156574X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Bruce HugmanJohn Henry Phillips|title= Out of BoundsThe Search|rating= 45|genre= AutobiographyHistory|summary= Author Bruce Hugman has been a school teacherArchaeology cannot be child's play, probation officerwhen you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, smallholderoften 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 is a case of the latter, university lectureras our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, PR Professionalthe target might not exist any more – oh, is an international communications consultant and teacher in healthcare and patient safetyit's underwater, when he cannot dive. Having nursed two partners Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the final stages of AIDSheroic old man's visit back to France, and survived our author has promised to find the 2004 Asian Tsunami. A varied and interesting life then – landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the first thirty years vast majority of it that Hugman chooses whom perished. Who else would make such promises to concentrate on here. someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1508423709</amazonuk>1472146182

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher DellB09F4CTKJR|title=Mythology: An Illustrated Journey Into Our Imagined WorldsFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer

|genre=Spirituality and ReligionHistorical Fiction|summary=What does a rainbow mean to you? How would you explain It's the creation later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the world if you had no science as such, or conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the changing of 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the seasons? What other kinds of natures – chaotic trickeryfirst US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, evil personae or even the characteristics of goats – people your world? And why is it that first to be attached to the answers man RAF and woman have collectively formed the first to such questions have been so similar across be sent into the oceans and across skies to fight the centuries? This highly pictorial volume looks at the mythologies Germans in active combat. But before that formed those answerscan happen, and locks on Petrol has to a multitude of subjects – blood, music, godly activity – to show us what has followedmaster flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0500291519</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Caroline Moorehead0578761718|title=Village The Inspiring History of Secretsa Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver|rating=34.5

|summary=''Village The church of Secrets'' is an account St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of resistance (with a small 'r') and rescue London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, the original church was destroyed in a series the Great Fire of small villages scattered across the Vivarais-Lignon plateau London in Vichy France1666. Residents of these villages harboured It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a number of peopledesign by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, many when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that wasn't the end of them childrenits story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, many of them Jews, seeking to avoid deportation the stones from the church's walls were transported to concentration campsFulton, at great personal riskMissouri. There have been other accounts of this chapter in French history and, of course, a great many books about Vichy France in general. However, ''Village the grounds of Secrets'' is, perhapsWestminster College, the most detailed, much of it based on primary sources (interviews with both rescuers church was rebuilt and the rescued, or their families), backed up by extensive documentary researchtoday serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009955464X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Finn and Petra Couvee1784385166|title=The Zhivago AffairThird Reich in 100 Objects: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden BookA Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=One What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the many things Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to come out a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of this incredibly clear the Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. But some objects and readable book is images from that we Brits, for all our literary heritage, have got nothing like an equivalent time may be less familiar to Boris Pasternakyou. He or she would have In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to sell like Rowling, regularly capture illustrate the enjoyment and spirit period of the nation a la Danny Boyle's Olympics ceremoniesThird Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts. }}{{Frontpage|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and at Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=I never really followed the same time have events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the cultural heft second half of Larkin, Rushdietheir teens has other priorities, Graham Greene and more combinedyou know. Someone connected with choosing recipients I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the Nobel Prize declare him here to be birth of the Soviet TS EliotTank Man image, but thatI didn's nothing like. So t know how the reader probably has to stretch herself to see someone so well-respected and well-loved area had long been a venue for his versepolitical protest, who spent twelve years and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a huge, society-defining novel, only general browser's context for the country to nix every plan to get it publishedwhole season of protests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099581345</amazonuk>1684056993

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ingrid von Oelhafen and Tim Tate0648684806|title=Hitler's Forgotten ChildrenClara Colby: My Life Inside the LebensbornThe International Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|genre=AutobiographyBiography|summary=You see that name that credits the author The path of this book? Forget it, itClara Dorothy Bewick's not accuratelife was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. (I don't mean Tim Tate's workmanlike, journalistic ghost writing, more At the time she was just three-years-old but because of which later.) The narrator of this book did change her name by deed poll to something like Ingrid von Oelhafen some time agochildhood ailment, but not exactly how she wantedwasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. She grew up as Ingrid von OelhafenInstead, although that was the name of she remained with her fathergrandparents, who was so desperately absentdoted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in being over a generation older than his wife, with whom he was separatedand out of school. She might well have had her mother's maiden name if her parents had divorced – was the only child in the household and indeed her mother did move on to have a second familychildhood was glorious. By contrast, and was terribly distant herself – young Ingrid would plead and plead for her company while family had become pioneer farmers in a remote children's home, and a lot the mid-west of family secrets were not passed down at opportune times. Oh, the United States and legally, due to what little documentation life was to be seenhard, such as immunisation record cards, Ingrid Clara was not Ingrid at all, but Erika Matko. Through this book, we to find out when she was not blood-kin with and her brother, grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her step-brother was to die, mother for a few months: she was not blood-kin with her sistermarried for fifteen years, but was her brother's, – ohhad ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and even died in this day and age you can still find a changeling foundlingchildbirth not long after Clara arrived. Such incredibly convoluted family trees are As the fault of the Lebensborneldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783961201</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Francis O'Gorman1783784350|title= WorryingThis Golden Fleece: A Literary and Cultural Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= ‘’Worrying: A Literary 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 Cultural History’’ begins with even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be a familiar scene time for anyone who experiences making changes and she decided that persistent feeling she would travel the length and breadth of fretful panic: lying awake the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscape. She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the early hours, unable farm'' - and learned to switch offspin, thoughts turning over in your headknit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. If this common situation hits home, ‘This book’, its author Francis O’Gorman writes, ‘is for youThis was in her blood.’|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144115129X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Loades1789017977|title=The Seymours of Wolf HallRonnie and Hilda's Romance: A Tudor Family StoryTowards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= In medieval times Wolf Hall Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or Wolfhall (not they were ever married or even Wulfhall)Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while the longfamily was quite well-sinceto-demolished family seat do but disaster struck in Wiltshire, was the home of the Seymour family1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. Their greatest triumph, followed by a speedy decline and fall, One thing he did inherit from his father was part of Tudor history, his need to be well-turned-out and is thus the focus of this bookwould stay with him throughout his life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445634953</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Philip Parker|title= The Northmen’s Fury: A History of the Viking World|rating= 4|genre= History|summary= In AD793, the Vikings arrived on our shores. Bringing death and destruction, they sacked the island monastery of Lindisfarne. Bloodthirsty warriors, they soon descended on northern Europe. However, for all their reputation as terrible and brutal thugs, He joined the Vikings possessed a culture that was far more sophisticated than they are often given credit for, producing art, literature and long lasting kingdoms. Philip Parker describes how these people came to rule over much of Europe for nearly three centuries, army at eighteen in this fascinating and intriguing read1942. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551845</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Wilcox1980891117|title=Mudlark RiverG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: Down A year in the Thames with a Victorian Map life of George Engleheart|author=John Webley

|genre=TravelArt|summary=Do you think finding George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a 19th century map would inspire you career lasting from the 1770s to walk the entire length Regency era. He was also one of the Thames? Because most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that's time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what Simon Wilcox didis referred to as his fee book. I think there's something impossibly romantic about that, don't you?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993016308</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Williams1789016304|title=The Trains Now DepartedWar and Love: Sixteen Excursions into the Lost Delights of BritainA family's Railwaystestament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating=3.5

|summary=Beaching wasnMelanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank''t 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 buffer 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 fate of various train lines of our land – it occupation could have been sheer managerial incompetence, the birth of the package air holiday, or never happen: even road-builders' bloody-minded spite those who thought that served to bring down the end of Germans might reach the line. Yescity were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the fact you can easily pepper your words with idiom from Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the world of trains shows how important they have been over the last two hundred yearsway that it did, and this book is geared around that but initial protests melted away as well, if happily cliché-freethe organisers became more circumspect. Our author takes us It's an atrocity on a journey around various sites where train lines and elements vast scale but made up of tens of what once rode proudly upon them have been and gone. So grab a platform ticket (RIP) and see what class thousands of journey we're travelling inindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848094353</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John George Freeman and Ronnie Scott (editor)1908745819|title=Three Men and a Bradshaw|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=This book is quite the very time machine, and because of that some of its own history is needed in summary. A year or two ago, our presenter Shaun Sewell was buying some private documents from the descendants of John George Freeman, to complete a set of illustrated travel journals he'd met with when risking a punt on the first few at auction. He was intent on getting them published since finding them, and seemed to be the first person with that desire since they were first written in the 1870s. Back then they were well-written, educative and entertaining looks at the early days of the travel industry, when for example piers were novel(ty) ways for the rail companies to justify sending people to the ends of the country where previously there had been little for them to do. Here then is railwayana, travel and social history, all between two covers. So even if this doesn't find the perfectly huge audience of some books, it will certainly raise interest in many households.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947441</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSurfacing|author= Steven Nightingale|title= Granada: The Light of Andalucia|rating=4 |genre= History |summary= Don't expect (as I did) a ''Parrot-in-the-Pepper-Tree'' type collection of comedic mishaps and tales about the joys -- and perils -- of joining a new community. This is, more than anything, a history book, albeit one in which the writer's deep love of his adopted home (Granada and, more specifically, the Albayzín, the district he lives in), his family and his neighbours makes every sentence sparkle. Even better, it's a history book that assumes no knowledge on the part of the reader. Steven Nightingale covers centuries of events in Spain, describing them with clarity and in a typically engaging style. He starts with the Moorish occupation of Spain in 711 and ends post-Civil War. Despite its vast chronological span, the book is more than a dry recounting of events and dates. Yes, that information is there, as befits any good history book. But Steven Nightingale's focus is more on the effects of these historical events, and the achievements of the times, particularly the ongoing legacy of the Moorish occupation. He writes in detail about Arabic poetry, the timeless nature of love, developments in maths, science and the arts, geometry in tiling, and much more.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886313</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Paul O'Keeffe|title=Waterloo: The AftermathKathleen Jamie|rating=4.5

|summary=There have been several accounts of the battle of Waterloo and of the events Sometimes when people suggest that led up to you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. But Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it is always interesting turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to discover hearing a book which finds calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of the author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a different way bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of telling the talepoetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, or in this case focusing more book had my name on what happened directly afterwardsit. 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>0099563797</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Buk-Swienty0857058320|title=1864: The forgotten war that shaped modern EuropeLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

|summary=The brief but bloody clash of arms between Denmark ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and Prussia which took place death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in 1864 has never been regarded as one of the major 19th century European warsSpanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, and I cannot recall having ever seen a single volume devoted to it so faris the figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. In Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this book, which forms dictator. The question at the basis centre of a new TV drama series, Tom Buk-Swienty has done us a service in reminding us that this book is whether it had is possible for his great uncle to be a far greater political impact than we may have appreciatedhero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781252769</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Treglown0008294011|title=Franco's CryptHow to Lose a Country: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran|rating=34.5

|summary=With A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question ''Franco’s CryptDiscuss the factors which led to...'' Jeremy Treglown has taken a highly charged subject – life in Spain under Franco – I agreed that she was right and placed wasn't certain whether it under was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to some might appear a somewhat revisionist microscope. His aim appears to be twofold: to consider the nature of collective memory, particularly I think now that I do know. We are in the light danger of the exhumations losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of mass graves that commenced earlier this centurya better one, and, secondly, to examine – and celebrate - Spain’s cultural output during Franco’s years particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784701157</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Derek Niemann1788037812|title=A Nazi in The Fraternity of the FamilyEstranged: The Hidden Story of an SS Family Fight for Homosexual Rights in Wartime GermanyEngland, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson

|summary=It goes almost without saying Originally passed in 1885, the law that sixteenthhad made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-century Englandsex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, at three books on the height nature of religious persecution, was a pretty perilous agehomosexuality appeared. Queen Mary was notorious for the number of Protestants who They were burnt at the stake for their beliefs during her five-year reign. A belief widely held written by many (depending on your religiontwo homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as likely well as not) the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was that during common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the forty-five years that ‘Good Queen Bess’ reignedUK, greater toleration held sway. This has recently been disproved beyond doubt by several historiansso the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and this book likewise helps beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to underline the savagery towards Catholics that was endemic under her rulemilestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784700053</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Greene1910593508|title=Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of RussiaApollo|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summaryauthor=It's no mistake that the cover of my edition of this book is a photo where the Trans-Siberian Railway is horizontal in the frame. It's well known for going east-west, left to right across the map of the largest country by far in the world. 9,288 kilometres from Moscow to the eastern stretches of Russia, it could only be a long, thin line across the cover, as it is in our imagination of it as a form of transport and a travel destination in its own right. So when this book mentions it as the spine or backbone of Russia a couple of times, that's got to be of a prone Russia – one lying down, not upright or active. David Greene, a stalwart of northern American radio journalismMatt Fitch, uses this book to see just how active or otherwise Russia Chris Baker and Russians are – and finds their lying down to be quite a definite verdict, as well as a slight indictment. It's no mistake either for this cover to have people in the frame alongside the train carriages, for the people met both riding and living alongside the tracks of the Railway are definitely the ribs of the piece.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846883709</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Stephen Bates|title=1815: Regency Britain in the Year of WaterlooMike Collins|rating=4.5

|summary=The idea of taking This incredible graphic novel is a pivotal year from love letter to the past Moon landings and devoting a whole book to the theme, embracing politicalpassion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, social Chris Baker and military history, Mike Collins. This is a very interesting one. Stephen Bates did so successfully not long ago with ‘Two Nations: Britain in 1846’story we know well and because of this, and here he does the same again, taking authors take a step three decades back.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781858217</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Lena Mukhina and Amanda Love Darragh (translator)|title=The Diary of Lena Mukhina: A Girl's Life few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the Siege of Leningrad|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=If life as a girl of school-leaving age is hard enough, think about it when you're stuck in a great city under a horrendous siegeblanks. Lena Mukhina's diary These shortcuts are the only covers half downside to the 800-odd days the nightmare in Leningrad lasted, but so palpably singular were the circumstances that it feels like one is given the clearest insight into what it was like, courtesy of these pagesbook. IIf you've been there and never felt the ghost ever read a comic book adaptation of the siege in the modern St Petersburg, anything like (for example) the ruination of Warsaw had lived on. But a dreadful time this was. At film you will be familiar with the peak times of Nazi oppression slight feeling that there are scenes missing and aerial bombing, the city lost 2 or 3 residents' lives ''every minute'' of the day on averagethat dialogue has been trimmed. The city was desperate for fuel, and food – and this This is a place where it can – graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and does here – snow in June. Without giving still felt too much of the diet away, it's notable that later on Lena dreams of having a menagerie of small animals to live with – but no dogs or catsshort.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144726987X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jerry White1786331047|title=Zeppelin NightsThe Race to Save the Romanovs: London in The Truth Behind the First World WarSecret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport

|summary=It seems that only recently, with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War upon us, that historians have really looked thoroughly at the social history aspect and the effect it had on the population at home. Jerry White, who has already made a study of London over the last three centuries or so in previous titles, now turns his attention to life in the capital during those momentous four years.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099556049</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=David Esterly|title=The Lost Carving: A Journey to basic facts about the Heart deaths of Making|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Bouncing between his studio in upstate New York Nicholas and the sites of various English sojournsAlexandra, woodcarver David Esterly's seems to be an idyllic existence. Yet it's not all cosy cottages in the snow and watching geese and coyotes when he looks up from his workbench. There is an element of hard-won retreat from the trials some of life in this memoir, but which were deliberately obscured at the same time there is an argument for the essential difficulty of the artist's life. 'Carvers are starvers,' a wizened English carver once told him. Certainly there is no great fortune to be won from a profession as obscure as limewood carving, but the rewards outweigh the hard graft for Esterly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649191</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Emma Tennant, Hilary Bailey and David Elliott|title=Did We Meet on Grub Street?|rating=3.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Essentiallyvarious reasons, the three authors (all of whom have long careers in the book industry) revel in the idea of being whining old curmudgeons who miss the good old days of publishingsince been established. This unashamed nostalgia provides For the focus last few months of the book and allows the writers to recount numerous anecdotes from their days lives in Russia the publishing business. Whilst the primary audience for this book may well be students of creative writing former Tsar and media studiesTsarina, it also serves as an interesting exploration of an aspect of modern history: how a once-burgeoning industry is now a shell of its former selftheir children and few remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, much like a lot of manufacturinghumiliating captivity. Because of thisTo prevent them from being rescued, I was disappointed that no space was given to a consideration of how in July 1918 the rise of the e-book and Kindle has directly damaged both the sale of books revolutionary regime had them all shot and the potential for new books bayoneted to be written (fewer real books sold = fewer financial advances paid to writers = fewer books written). Alsodeath in circumstances which, given once the clear love of books as treasured artifactsnews was confirmed beyond all doubt, the dismissal of the Harry Potter phenomenon seems truculent, given the impetus the series gave to reading amongst both the young and adultshorrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704372983</amazonuk>