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[[Category:New Reviews|History]]==History==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances Woodsford1785633457|title=Dear Mr BigelowCharging Around: A Transatlantic FriendshipExploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=45|genre=AutobiographyTravel|summary=Meet Mister Bigelow. He's elderly, living alone on Long Island, New York, Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with some health problems but more than enough family and friends to get him by, and still a very active interest in yachting, regattas and morepreference for slow travel. Meet, too, Frances Woodsford. She's reaching middle-age, living with her brother and mum in Bournemouth, and working for As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the local baths as organiser edges of events, office lackey and moreEngland in an electric car was not totally outrageous. I suggest you do meet themIn fact, although neither ever met the other. Despite this they kept up it should be a brisk pleasant holiday for Clive and lively conversation about all aspects of life, from the late 1940s until his death at the beginning of the 60s. And as a result comes this bookwife, of heavily edited highlightsJoan, which opens up a world of social history and entertaining diary-style comment.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542293</amazonuk>shouldn't it?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter AckroydB09BLBP3P8|title=Venice: Pure City|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Among Peter AckroydNeville Chamberlain's recent works are 'biographies' of London and of the river Thames. Now he gives similar treatment to Venice, basically a history but enlivened with his elegant, literary styleWar: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, and what a previous reviewer has called his love of 'psychogeographical investigation'.x|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099422565</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1939-1940|author=Benedict Gummer|title=The Scourging Angel: The Black Death in the British IslesFrederic Seager

|summary=The mid-fourteenth century was an unsettled time for EnglandReceived wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. It was an age which saw One such is the scrubbing from the first phases popular imagination of the protracted Hundred Years’ early days of World War with FranceII from 1939-40, and known as the Scottish ''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war of independencebreaking out, which came and Churchill coming in to an end with save the capture of King David IIday. As if these events were not enoughVery little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in 1346 there this book, it was the first case of a man vital significance in Europe contracting an unknown disease that rapidly swept across how the continent, claiming the lives of millions, and one medieval chronicler noted that 'the bodies looked like a macabre lasagne: corpses piled row upon row separated only by layers of dirt'war played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548836</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary Beard3756228711|title=CDC: The Parthenonhappy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans Bodmer|rating=4.5

|summary=Despite ''The history of the proliferation development of populist historians in print and on television, Professor Mary Beard continues to be a voice apart. Her conversational style IT could fill books of writing belies the academic research at its heart. This is serious history written as engagingly as a detective storyseveral hundred pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683491</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Peter Beaumont|title=The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict |rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Peter Beaumont Author Hans Bodmer is the Foreign Affairs editor at The Observerquite right about that. He joined has chosen to tell us about the paper in 1989 and has spent much short, but explosive, history of the intervening time dealing with the kind of 'foreign affairs' that is better described as 'war reporting'Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It'The Secret Life of War' is s a distillation of his years fascinating tale, told in the field. It is a book ill-served by both its title mixture of technological summary and its cover, except maybe insofar as both might serve to sneak it onto the bookshelves of those who really need to read it, but probably wouldn't choose to do so were it more accurately wrappedwry anecdote.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520982</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick BarrattJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Lost Voices from the Titanic: The Definitive Oral HistoryFritz and Kurt|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=As Barratt points out 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 around the opening pagesempty market place, there are literally thousands of titles available about helping the sinking of neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the Titanic, synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the time lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the largest, most expensive Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and most luxurious ship ever builtworkmanlike as a light switch. His aim in But this volume is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of having a national vote to bridge keep the gap between another forensic examination of how it sankNazis out, invite them in with open arms. ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, and yet another reas did all the round-run ups of what he calls Jews. These in their turn leave the familiar stories younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of heroism an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and tragedy from literature in his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the public domain same train to provide Buchenwald and the human story behind stone quarry there. And us wondering how the disaster.titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848091516</amazonuk>024156574X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stefan KleinJohn Henry Phillips|title=Leonardo's Legacy: How Da Vinci Reinvented the WorldThe Search

|summary=We British tend Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to forget just how insignificant we arefind what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what.  Tiny geographicallyArchaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. Tiny in population. Tiny, whatever we tell ourselves, on the world stage. Yet our language This book is spoken in various forms worldwide by approximately four billion people; about a third case of the world's population. How did ''that'' happen? This is what Robert McCrum attempts latter, as our author promises to explain.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916404</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bernhard Schlink|title=Guilt About locate the topic of the Past|rating=4|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Consider, if you will, guilttitular search. You might have And he really hasn't made it tainting you, as 'beyond easy for himself – the perpetratorssearch area is a wide one, every person who stands in solidarity with them and maintains solidarity after the fact becomes entangled'. The link target might not strictly be a legal oneexist any more – oh, but concern and it'norms of religion and moralss underwater, etiquette and custom as well as day-when he cannot dive. Latching on to-day communications and interactions'. Hence a collective guilt like no other particular D- that witnessed in Germany. Day veteran through helping the heroic old man'The assumption that membership to a people engenders solidarity is something Germans of my generation do not easily like s visit back to accept'France, we read. However difficult it might have been back then in its day, Germany had our author has promised to physically renounce anything find the landing craft that delivered him to do with NazismNormandy, and that he was lucky to actively 'opt-out' of connections survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to avoid the solidarity seen connecting the whole nation like erect a toxic spider web. And since then it's linked in all memorial to everyone else aboard, the children, in a ''bequeathal'' vast majority of guiltwhom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905636776</amazonuk>1472146182

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sara WheelerB09F4CTKJR|title=The Magnetic North: Travels in the ArcticFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer

|genre=TravelHistorical Fiction|summary=The title of this book suggests another travel book about adventure in It's the frozen north, but Sara Wheeler mixes her tales later stages of her own travels with some history of polar exploration World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a serious examination of young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the impact of visitors and of those who wish first US Aero Squadron to exploit be trained in Canada, the Arctic’s natural resources on first to be attached to the region RAF and its people. Rather than setting off on another expedition the first to reach be sent into the North Pole, she travels around bits of skies to fight the Arctic divided between different countries and governmentsGermans in active combat. But before that can happen, including Chukotka (Russia), Alaska (USA), Canada, Greenland, Svalbard (Norway) and Lapland (Russia and Scandinavia). There is a huge amount of material in Petrol has to master flying the book notoriously difficult but Wheeler organises and presents it in a very readable, accessible stylemajestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516888</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ronald Skirth and Duncan Barrett0578761718|title=The Reluctant Tommy: An Extraordinary Memoir Inspiring History of the First World Wara Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver

|genre=AutobiographyHistory|summary=Ronald Skirth was one The church of many young Englishmen St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of nineteen caught up London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in the First World Warrecords. Sadly, He joined the Royal Garrison Artillery original church was destroyed in 1916, was promoted to Corporal, and sent to the western frontGreat Fire of London in 1666. Like most of his contemporaries, when he went he It was an unquestioning servant of King rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and countrythen survived for centuries until World War II, fighting for what he believed when it was rightagain ruined by bombs during the Blitz. On But that wasn't the battlefields end of Flandersits story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, one day he came across the body of Hans, a German soldier stones from the same agechurch's walls were transported to Fulton, if not youngerMissouri. The dead man's hand was clutching a photograph of his girlfriendThere, who could almost have been in the twin sister grounds of EllaWestminster College, Skirth's own sweetheart. Like two of his friends who had just been killed, Hans had died the church was rebuilt and today serves as a result of the stupidity of othersmemorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023074673X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Juliet Nicolson1784385166|title=The Great SilenceThird Reich in 100 Objects: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow A Material History of the Great War Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse|rating=45

|summary=As What is the author says in her introduction, the 'great silence' of the title was first image that which followed the 'incessant thunder' comes to mind when you think of the Great War. There are three crucial dates in her narrative, all specific days in three successive Novembers. Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The first was when the guns fell silent in 1918, the second was that of the first two-minute silence in memory of the fallen one year later, and the third was when the Unknown Soldier was lowered into silence beneath the floor in Westminster Abbey, another year on. These act as gate to a framework around which she tells the story concentration camp? None of the silence these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of grief which affected everyone in various ways during the first two years of peace.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719562562</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mark Griffiths|title=The Lotus Quest|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=Mark Griffiths is one of BritainThird Reich's leading plant expertsfascist regime in all its iniquity. I know this because his brief biog in the front of The Lotus Quest tells me so; just as it tells me But some objects and images from that he is the editor of The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening 'the largest work on horticulture ever published'time may be less familiar to you. His prior works list includes five other plant book creditsIn this short volume, three of them for Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the RHS. I shall take all period of this on trust, since attempts to find out more about the author and his background Third Reich through the usual internet search mechanisms has failed miserably. He remains as elusive as the sacred flower that is the subject one hundred of this latest work: the lotusits material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184595100X</amazonuk> 

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Archie BrownLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=The Rise and Fall of CommunismTiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes

|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary='A source of hope for a radiant future or…the greatest threat on I never really followed the face events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the earth'. Whichever second half of these descriptions their teens has other priorities, you would apply to Communism you will find Archie Brownknow. I certainly didn's detailed t know of the weeks of protests and largely objective study enlightening hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and engrossing. On one levelthe birth of the Tank Man image, this is a chronological description of I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political force grew to dominate protest, and I didn't know more than a third of spit about the worldpeople involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's population then virtually disappeared within a period context for the whole season of less than a centuryprotests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845950674</amazonuk>1684056993

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Welshman0648684806|title=Churchill's ChildrenClara Colby: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain International Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick'You have s life was probably determined when her family emigrated to learn the USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to be hard mensail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, to accept sacrifice without ever succumbing'both in and out of school. Such did Hitler say at She was the Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies only child in the 1930shousehold and her childhood was glorious. He probably did not have By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in mind playing in goal at a FA Cup final with a broken neck, such is the lifetime mid-west of difference between the two references. But that lifetimeUnited States and life was hard, as packed Clara was to find out when she and varied as it her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she wasmarried for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, is seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the pages of this ever-interesting eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and swiftly-devoured bookWisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082884</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Skidmore1783784350|title=Death and the VirginThis Golden Fleece: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart |rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=When Elizabeth I ascended the throne in November 1558, everyoneA Journey Through Britain's dominant concern was the matter of her taking an appropriate husband and securing the succession. The man most likely to become her husband was Robert Dudley, whom she made her Master of the Horse and entrusted with considerable responsibility for her coronation festivities. The fact that he was already married to Amy Robsart did little to quell the speculation, especially since she was believed to be dying of breast cancer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297846507</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewKnitted History|author=R A Scotti|title=The Lost Mona LisaEsther Rutter|rating=4.5

|summary=One of the few things I remember from those writers' courses It was December and advice books – and I can hear from here you wished I remembered more of them – Esther Rutter was the merit stuck in being aware of anniversaries, especially in your area of expertiseher office job, writing to people she'd never met and having the ability to sell articles concerning historical events linked into centenaries, modern comparisons, preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and so oneven her knitting did not soothe her mind. Well, here is January was going to be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of the book equivalentBritish Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and although ittelling the story of wool's early – history and how ithad made and changed the landscape. She's looking back d grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the summer of 1911 – this stands as quality enough farm'' - and learned to deny any latecomers shelf roomspin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0553818309</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Greg Grandin1789017977|title=Fordlandia: The Rise Ronnie and Fall of Henry FordHilda's Forgotten Jungle CityRomance: Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=In 1927, Ronnie Williams was the Ford Motor company bought a huge tract son of land Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in Brazil1863, for the purpose of the company growing its own rubber for use in making its cars. They planted rubber trees but he was already many years older than Ethel and built he might well have shaved a factory and houses, and few years off his age. For a number of top managers from while the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the company were posted 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to Fordlandia adjust to run the operationa very different lifestyle. Huge amounts of money were pumped into Fordlandia, One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and Ford made great claims for their plansthis would stay with him throughout his life. However, He joined the project was a spectacular failure, and it lasted less than twenty yearsarmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848311478</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dominique Lapierre1980891117|title=G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A Rainbow year in the Night life of George Engleheart|author=John Webley

|genre=Politics and SocietyArt|summary=A book integrating otherwise piecemeal news stories picked up over George Engleheart was one of the past forty years into leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a coherent explanation is always welcomecareer lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. This book explores South Africa's history and developmentHe was also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5, from 000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the earliest Dutch arrivals in 1652 names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to the first racially integrated elections in 1994as his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818477</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Doug Stewart1789016304|title=The Boy Who Would Be ShakespeareWar and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin

|summary=In Melanie 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'' 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 late 18th centurywar years, keen but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to impress the Shakespeare-obsessed father happen in a country with liberal values who paid him little attention, 19 year old William Henry Ireland forged a couple of Elizabethan documents were resistant to show himGerman occupation. With Most people believed that the older man completely taken inoccupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, his child then pretended he'd found a trunk full of lost artefacts belonging that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the Bard – love letters to Anne Hathaway, a declaration of his Protestant faithway that it did, but initial protests melted away as the manuscript of King Lear, and even entirely new playsorganisers became more circumspect. Ireland fooled not only his father, It's an atrocity on a vast scale but also many made up of tens of the prominent Londoners thousands of the time, including Robert Southey, James Boswell, and the future William IVindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818310</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jim Krane1908745819|title=Dubai: The Story of the World's Fastest CitySurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie|rating=4.5

|summary=In Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the 1950book. That's, Dubai contained just a few thousand inhabitants scraping rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a living. By 1985book calling your name, rarely get it had grownwrong. In this case, but Sheikh Mohammed I was still laughed at when he said that he wanted to make it a popular destination for touriststold why. With the addition The blurb speaks of artificial islands, the worldauthor considering ''s tallest building, an indoor ski slopeolder, and much more, itless tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's now one not a bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the natural world's foremost cities - but as headlines showed last year, of those aspects of the stellar growth may have been extremely costlypoetic and lyrical that are about style not form, in terms and substance most of financesall, environmental problemsabout connection. Of course, and the quality of life this book had my name on it. It was written for some of me. It would have found its inhabitantsway to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848870094</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances Stonor Saunders0857058320|title=The Woman Who Shot Mussolini|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Most British titled families of Lord Of All the 19th and 20th centuries have produced their fair share of rebels. Yet few came as close to changing the course of European history as the Honourable Violet Gibson, one of eight children of Baron Ashbourne, a Protestant Anglo-Irish peer and MP in Disraeli's government during the 1870s.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571239773</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDead|author=Josephine Wilkinson|title=The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Before her marriage to King Henry VIII, Javier Cercas and Anne Boleyn had already been courted by three suitors, any of whom might have become her husband - and possibly saved her from her eventual end on the scaffold. The first was her Irish cousin James Butler, later Earl of Ormond, whom she was at one time intended to marry in order to settle a family dispute over the title and estates of the Earldom of Ormond. After their marriage negotiations came to an end in the face of legal obstacles, she became betrothed to Henry Percy, heir to the Duke of Northumberland. With a little help from the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke, who had little time for his son, insisted that any idea of marriage between them should be dismissed forthwith. Soon after this the poet Thomas Wyatt became enamoured of her, but by this time there was fierce competition from his sovereign, and her destiny was sealed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848684304</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Caroline Moorehead |title=Dancing to the Precipice : Lucie De La Tour Du Pin and the French RevolutionMcLean (translator)

|summary=Two hundred years ago, with ''Lord Of All the fall of the monarchy and the Napoleonic wars, France underwent one cataclysmic change after another. There were many who witnessed and experienced the volatile age at first hand, but few left Dead'' is a more detailed record than journey to uncover the subject of this biography, Lucie-Henriette Dillon, Marquise Marchioness de La Tour du Pin.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099490528</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Van der Kiste|title=William 's lost ancestor's life and Mary: Heroes of the Glorious Revolution|rating=4death.5|genre=Biography|summary=At school I remember spending a lot of time on Cercas is searching for the Tudors and meaning behind his great uncle's death in the early Stuarts – obviously Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great favourites of uncle, is the history teacher and then galloping unceremoniously through figure who looms large over the intervening years until we reached another book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco''meaningful'' period – the Victorian eras forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The importance of William and Mary was completely overlooked in favour of a quick mention of question at the fact that William wasn't in direct line centre of succession this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the throne and Mary had never wanted to marry him in the first place. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as 'tables'wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075094577X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Delgado0008294011|title=KamikazeHow to Lose a Country: History's Greatest Naval DisasterThe 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran

|summary=When Mongol leader, Khubilai Khan, achieved A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what his Grandfather Genghis had failed in years to do in conquering China, he inherited come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question ''Discuss the worldfactors which led to...''s largest I agreed that she was right and most sophisticated navy. However, in attempting to utilise wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this ' was leading to expand his empire further to Java, Vietnam and mainly Japan, he lost the entire armada in a few short years. New marine archeological evidence from Japan, ironically with the site discovered I think now that I do know. We are in the 1990s in the construction of new defences from the weather, has raised questions on the traditional view that the defeat of the two Japanese invasion forces danger of 1274 losing democracy and particlularly 1281 were solely due to the intervention whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the weather and what Japanese culture claim was a Kamikaze (or 'benevolent dictator'divine windis as rare as hen'') summoned by the Godss teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532581</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Baldwin1788037812|title=The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in the Wars Fraternity of the Roses|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Due to the small amount of surviving personal sources, any book which purports to be a biography of a 15-century subject is almost inevitably going to be more a 'life and times' than a life. In the case of women who were sisters but not sovereigns or consorts themselves, the lack of data will be even more acute.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750950765</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Paul Strathern|title=Estranged: The Artist, The Philosopher and The Warrior|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=The interaction between three very different, not to say contrasting, personalities of the Renaissance period sets the scene Fight for what promises to be an intriguing title. In 1502 the paths of Cesare BorgiaHomosexual Rights in England, notorious son of the equally infamous Pope Alexander VI, Niccolò Machiavelli, the intellectual and diplomat, and Leonardo da Vinci, at the time best known as a military engineer though remembered today primarily as a great artist, were destined to cross.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951212</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1891-1908|author=Timothy W Ryback|title=Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His LifeBrian Anderson|rating=4.5

|summary=As Originally passed in 1885, the fictional schoolboy hero Nigel Molesworth might have said, 'any fule kno' law that Adolf Hitler was notorious had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for burning 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three bookson the nature of homosexuality appeared. Nevertheless he was also an avid collector They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and passionate readerJohn Addington Symonds, as around 1200 surviving volumes once in his possession now in well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the Rare Book Division margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the Library of CongressEuropean Continent, and a smaller quantity but barely talked about in Brown Universitythe UK, Rhode Island, demonstrate. Among them so the publications of these men were world literature classics, such as 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and 'Gulliver's Travels'. He also owned an edition of hugely significant – contributing to the collected works scientific understanding of Shakespearehomosexuality, in hand-tooled Moroccan leather with a gold-embossed eagle flanked by his initials on and beginning the spine. The Bardstruggle for recognition and equality, he once said, was greatly superior leading to Goethe and Schillerthe milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532174</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Druin Burch1910593508|title=Taking the MedicineApollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins

|summary=The Act This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the passion for the Abolition subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of this, the Slave Trade was passed authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in Britain in March 1807, and the last legal British slave ship left Africa seven months laterblanks. Other countries were slow These shortcuts are the only downside to follow suitthe book. Everyone in Britain knew If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the slight feeling that there would be resistance, are scenes missing and when the abolitionist Granville Sharpe purchased land in Sierra Leone to 'repatriate' freed slaves, Ottobah Cugoana, a former slave living in London, asked if it was possible for 'that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a fountain to send forth both sweet water graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and bitterstill felt too short.' Could the slave trade, he wondered, be abolished from West Africa - when West Africa was its source?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951174</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Grimson1786331047|title=The Isle of ManRace to Save the Romanovs: Portrait of a NationThe Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport

|summary=To many of us, The basic facts about the Isle deaths of Man is probably best known for the TynwaldNicholas and Alexandra, the annual TT motorcycle races, and as a holiday resort. I must admit that my knowledge some of it extended little further than that, and therefore found this book invaluable. In these 550 pages, profusely illustrated with photographs and maps, I imagine that few if any questions on which were deliberately obscured at the subject are left unanswered. John Grimson has lived there time for nearly forty yearsvarious reasons, and as well as working with several of the island's local authorities, was active as a have long-distance runner and cyclist until his early seventiessince been established.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709081030</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Thomas Asbridge|title=The Crusades: The War for For the Holy Land|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=The word 'Crusades' has been misappropriated and often used last few months of their lives in various other contexts over Russia the passing years. In former Tsar and Tsarina, their original meaning they children and few remaining servants were a series of holy wars during the medieval era between the Christian and Muslim worldheld in increasingly squalid, fighting for dominion over the Holy Land between 1095 and 1291 as the defenders of western civilization formed expeditions travelling across the face of the known world humiliating captivity. To prevent them from Europe, their sole aim being to conquer and defend an isolated swathe of territory centred on Jerusalem.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0743268601</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Van der Kiste|title=Sonsrescued, Servants and Statesmen: The Men in Queen Victoria's Life|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Like July 1918 the first Elizabeth more books than are strictly necessary have been written about Queen Victoria, but John Van der Kiste has taken the unusual step of using the men revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to death in her life to illuminate some dark corners circumstances which might other wise have remained unexplored. Of course the most famous man in her life, husband and Prince Consort Albert isn't 'son, servant or statesman' as promised by once the title of the booknews was confirmed beyond all doubt, but he established a trend. Victoria, often regarded as a difficult woman to please, would always have a man horrified their relatives in her life who would, to a greater or lesser extent, dominate herEurope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750937882</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Andrew Marr|title=The Making of Modern Britain: From Queen Victoria to V.E. Day|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=This book, and the BBC TV series which complements it, must confirm Andrew Marr's status as one of the most entertaining and compulsive historian-cum-presenters working today. His previous project, Move on postwar Britain, was hard to fault, [[Newest Home and anyone who enjoyed that will certainly relish this.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230709427</amazonuk>}}Family Reviews]]