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[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]]__NOTOC__ <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{Frontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=HistoryCharging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=5__NOTOC__|genre=Travel|summary=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=Charlotte MooreB09BLBP3P8|title=HancoxNeville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Hancox is the large imposing house in rural Sussex where Charlotte Moore was brought up, Received wisdom and where she still livessimplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. Although its origins are not fully documented, according to local records it certainly existed by One such is the mid-15th century, its name probably derived scrubbing from that of John Handcocks, one the popular imagination of the early owners. In what is basically part family history and part biography days of the house itselfWorld War II from 1939-40, known as the author traces its story back to lawyer John Dounton''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, the first owner about whom nothing substantial is knownwar breaking out, who made extensive alterations and Churchill coming in to it in 1569save the day. It then passed through the hands of several families until her ancestors acquired it Very little time is spent on this period in 1888. In 1900 one of them let it to the Church of England Temperance Society cultural reflections and yet, as a drying-out house for 'inebriates'Frederic Seager argues in this book, but the arrangement it was terminated of vital significance in 1907 and how the family moved back inwar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670915866</amazonuk>
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=3756228711
|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
|author=Hans Bodmer
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=''The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter AckroydJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Venice: Pure CityFritz and Kurt
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=Among Peter Ackroyd's recent works 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 empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours'biographieseach Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler' of London s will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the river ThamesNazis 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. Now he gives similar treatment These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to VeniceBritain or the US, basically a history but enlivened with while Fritz and his elegantfather are, literary styleunknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and what a previous reviewer has called his love the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of 'psychogeographical investigation'.xall this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099422565</amazonuk>024156574X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Benedict GummerJohn Henry Phillips|title=The Scourging Angel: The Black Death in the British IslesSearch|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=The mid-fourteenth century was an unsettled time for EnglandArchaeology 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. It was an age which saw the first phases This book is a case of the protracted Hundred Years’ War with Francelatter, and as our author promises to locate the Scottish war topic of independencethe titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, which came to an end with the capture of King David II. As if these events were target might not enoughexist any more – oh, in 1346 there was and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the first case of a heroic old man in Europe contracting an unknown disease that rapidly swept across the continent's visit back to France, claiming our author has promised to find the lives of millionslanding craft that delivered him to Normandy, and one medieval chronicler noted 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 bodies looked like a macabre lasagne: corpses piled row upon row separated only by layers vast majority of dirt'whom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548836</amazonuk>1472146182
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary BeardB09F4CTKJR|title=The ParthenonFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryHistorical Fiction|summary=Despite It's the proliferation later stages of populist historians in print World War I and on television, Professor Mary Beard continues to be a voice apart. Her conversational style of writing belies the academic research at its heartUnited States has just entered the conflict. This Petrol Petronus is serious history written as engagingly as a detective story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683491</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Beaumont|title=The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict |rating=5|genre=Politics young American who has signed up and Society|summary=Peter Beaumont is joined the Foreign Affairs editor at The Observer17 Aero Squadron. He joined This company was the paper first US Aero Squadron to be trained in 1989 Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF and has spent much of the intervening time dealing with first to be sent into the skies to fight the kind of 'foreign affairs' that is better described as 'war reporting'. 'The Secret Life of War' is a distillation of his years Germans in the fieldactive combat. It is a book ill-served by both its title and its coverBut before that can happen, except maybe insofar as both might serve Petrol has to sneak it onto master flying the bookshelves of those who really need to read it, notoriously difficult but probably wouldn't choose to do so were it more accurately wrappedmajestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520982</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick Barratt0578761718|title=Lost Voices from the Titanic: The Definitive Oral Inspiring Historyof a Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=As Barratt points out The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the opening pagesCity of London from at least 1181, there are literally thousands when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, the original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of titles available about London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the sinking fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that wasn't the end of the Titanicits story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, at the time stones from the largestchurch's walls were transported to Fulton, most expensive and most luxurious ship ever builtMissouri. His aim There, in this volume is to bridge the gap between another forensic examination grounds of how it sankWestminster College, and yet another re-run of what he calls the familiar stories of heroism church was rebuilt and tragedy from literature in the public domain today serves as a memorial to provide the human story behind the disasterWinston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848091516</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stefan Klein1784385166|title=Leonardo's LegacyThe Third Reich in 100 Objects: How Da Vinci Reinvented the WorldA Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=We British tend to forget just how insignificant we are. Tiny geographically. Tiny in population. Tiny, whatever we tell ourselves, on the world stage. Yet our language What is spoken in various forms worldwide by approximately four billion people; about a third of the world's population. How did ''first image that'' happen? This is what Robert McCrum attempts comes to explain.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916404</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bernhard Schlink|title=Guilt About the Past|rating=4|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Consider, if mind when you will, guilt. You might have it tainting you, as 'beyond think of the perpetrators, every person who stands in solidarity with them and maintains solidarity after the fact becomes entangled'. Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The link might not strictly be gate to a legal one, concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but concern 'norms they are emblematic of religion and morals, etiquette and custom as well as day-to-day communications and interactionsthe Third Reich'. Hence a collective guilt like no other - that witnessed s fascist regime in Germanyall its iniquity. 'The assumption But some objects and images from that membership time may be less familiar to a people engenders solidarity is something Germans of my generation do not easily like to accept', we readyou. However difficult it might have been back then in its dayIn this short volume, Germany had Roger Moorhouse has attempted to physically renounce anything to do with Nazism, to actively 'opt-out' illustrate the period of connections to avoid the solidarity seen connecting the whole nation like a toxic spider web. And since then it's linked in all the children, in a ''bequeathal'' Third Reich through one hundred of guiltits material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905636776</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara WheelerLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=The Magnetic NorthTiananmen 1989: Travels in the ArcticOur Shattered Hopes
|rating=4.5
|genre=TravelGraphic Novels|summary=The title I never really followed the events of this book suggests another travel book about adventure Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the frozen northsecond half of their teens has other priorities, but Sara Wheeler mixes her tales of her own travels with some history of polar exploration and a serious examination you know. I certainly didn't know of the impact weeks of visitors protests and of those who wish to exploit hunger strikes from the Arctic’s natural resources on students before the region massacre and its people. Rather than setting off on another expedition to reach the North Pole, she travels around bits birth of the Arctic divided between different countries and governmentsTank Man image, including Chukotka (Russia), Alaska (USA), Canada, GreenlandI didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, Svalbard (Norway) and Lapland (Russia and Scandinavia)I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. There This book is practically flawless in giving a huge amount general browser's context for the whole season of material in the book but Wheeler organises and presents it protests back in a very readable, accessible style1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099516888</amazonuk>1684056993
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ronald Skirth and Duncan Barrett0648684806|title=The Reluctant TommyClara Colby: An Extraordinary Memoir of the First World War|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Ronald Skirth was one of many young Englishmen of nineteen caught up in the First World War. He joined the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1916, was promoted to Corporal, and sent to the western front. Like most of his contemporaries, when he went he was an unquestioning servant of King and country, fighting for what he believed was right. On the battlefields of Flanders, one day he came across the body of Hans, a German soldier the same age, if not younger. The dead man's hand was clutching a photograph of his girlfriend, who could almost have been the twin sister of Ella, Skirth's own sweetheart. Like two of his friends who had just been killed, Hans had died as a result of the stupidity of others.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023074673X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewInternational Suffragist|author=Juliet Nicolson|title=The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War John Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryBiography|summary=As the author says in The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her introduction, family emigrated to the 'great silence' of USA. At the title time she was that which followed the just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn'incessant thunder' of the Great Wart allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. There are three crucial dates in Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her narrativeand saw that she received a good education, all specific days both in three successive Novembersand out of school. The first She was when the guns fell silent only child in 1918, the second household and her childhood was that of glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the first twomid-minute silence in memory west of the fallen one year laterUnited States and life was hard, and the third as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the Unknown Soldier was lowered into silence beneath the floor in Westminster Abbey, another year onfamily. These act as Clara would only know her mother for a framework around which few months: she tells the story of the silence of grief which affected everyone was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in various ways during childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the first two years of peaceeldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719562562</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mark Griffiths1783784350|title=The Lotus Quest|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=Mark Griffiths is one of This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's leading plant experts. I know this because his brief biog in the front of The Lotus Quest tells me so; just as it tells me that he is the editor of The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening 'the largest work on horticulture ever published'. His prior works list includes five other plant book credits, three of them for the RHS. I shall take all of this on trust, since attempts to find out more about the author and his background through the usual internet search mechanisms has failed miserably. He remains as elusive as the sacred flower that is the subject of this latest work: the lotus.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184595100X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewKnitted History|author=Archie Brown|title=The Rise and Fall of CommunismEsther Rutter|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'A source of hope 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 a radiant future or…the greatest threat on making changes and she decided that she would travel the face length and breadth of the earth'. Whichever British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of these descriptions you would apply to Communism you will find Archie Brownwool's detailed history and largely objective study enlightening how it had made and engrossingchanged the landscape. On one level, this is She'd grown up on a chronological description of how sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a political force grew free-range child on the farm'' - and learned to dominate a third of the worldspin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's population then virtually disappeared within a period of less than a centuryfriend. This was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845950674</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Welshman1789017977|title=ChurchillRonnie and Hilda's ChildrenRomance: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=As a little girl I Ronnie Williams was fascinated by stories from the second world warson of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. My Nan would tell me tales of her work doing welding, my mumThere's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's uncle had exciting adventure stories from his years birthdate: he claimed to have been born in the RAF1863, 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 book Carrie's War family was one I returned quite well-to again -do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and againfive-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. So I One thing he did inherit from his father was intrigued by his need to be well-turned-out and this title which looks would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at the stories of thirteen children and adults through World War Two, from the first wave of evacuations through to the end of the wareighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199574413</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Catrine Clay1980891117|title=Trautmann's JourneyG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup LegendA year in the life of George Engleheart|author=John Webley
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyArt|summary='You have to learn to be hard menGeorge Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to accept sacrifice without ever succumbing'. Such did Hitler say at the Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies in the 1930sRegency era. He probably did not have in mind playing in goal at a FA Cup final with a broken neckwas also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5, such is the lifetime 000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of difference between the two referencesKing George III). But Throughout most of that lifetimetime he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, as packed and varied subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as it was, is in the pages of this ever-interesting and swiftly-devoured his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082884</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Skidmore1789016304|title=Death War and the VirginLove: 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 family's dominant concern was the matter testament of her taking an appropriate husband and securing the succession. The man most likely to become her husband was Robert Dudleyanguish, whom she made her Master of the Horse endurance 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>}} {{newreviewdevotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=R A Scotti|title=The Lost Mona LisaMelanie Martin|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=One of the few things I remember from those writers' courses Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and advice books – and I can hear from here you wished I remembered more of them – was the merit in being aware of anniversariesentranced by what she discovered, especially particularly in your area ''The Diary of expertise, Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and having seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the ability to sell articles concerning historical events linked into centenaries, modern comparisonswar years, but only five thousand survived and so onMartin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. WellMost people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, here is that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the book equivalentway that it did, and although it's early – itbut initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's looking back an atrocity on the summer a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of 1911 – this stands as quality enough to deny any latecomers shelf roomindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0553818309</amazonuk>
}}
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=In the late 18th century, keen to impress the Shakespeare-obsessed father who paid him little attention, 19 year old William Henry Ireland forged Sometimes when people suggest that you read a couple of Elizabethan documents to show him. With the older man completely taken incertain book, his child then pretended hethey tell you ''this one has your name on it''d found a trunk full of lost artefacts belonging to the Bard – love letters to Anne Hathaway. Mostly we take them at their word, a declaration of his Protestant faith, the manuscript of King Lear, and even entirely new plays. Ireland fooled or not only his father, but also many of the prominent Londoners of rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the time, including Robert Southey, James Boswell, and the future William IVbook.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818310</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jim Krane|title=Dubai: The Story of the WorldThat's Fastest City|rating=4a rare experience.5|genre=History|summary=In the 1950's, Dubai contained just People who are sensitive to hearing a few thousand inhabitants scraping 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 its inhabitantsme.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848870094</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Frances Stonor Saunders|title=The Woman Who Shot Mussolini|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Most British titled families of the 19th and 20th centuries It would have produced their fair share of rebelsfound its way to me eventually. Yet few came as close I am pleased 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 1870shave it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571239773</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Josephine Wilkinson0857058320|title=The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Before her marriage to King Henry VIII, 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 Lord Of All 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>}} {{newreviewDead|author=Caroline Moorehead |title=Dancing to the Precipice : Lucie De La Tour Du Pin Javier Cercas and the French RevolutionAnne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Two hundred years ago, with ''Lord Of All the fall of Dead'' is a journey to uncover the monarchy author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Napoleonic warsSpanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, France underwent one cataclysmic change after another. There were many Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who witnessed and experienced looms large over the volatile age book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at first hand, but few left a more detailed record than the subject centre of this biography, Lucie-Henriette Dillon, Marquise Marchioness de La Tour du Pinbook is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099490528</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der Kiste0008294011|title=William and MaryHow to Lose a Country: Heroes of the Glorious Revolution|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=At school I remember spending a lot of time on the Tudors and the early Stuarts – obviously great favourites of the history teacher and then galloping unceremoniously through the intervening years until we reached another ''meaningful'' period – the Victorian era. The importance of William and Mary was completely overlooked in favour of a quick mention of the fact that William wasn't in direct line of succession 7 Steps from Democracy to the throne and Mary had never wanted to marry him in the first place. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as 'tables'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075094577X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDictatorship|author=James Delgado|title=Kamikaze: History's Greatest Naval DisasterEce Temelkuran
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|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>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Baldwin1788037812|title=The Kingmaker's SistersFraternity of the Estranged: Six Powerful Women The Fight for Homosexual Rights in the Wars of the Roses|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Due to the small amount of surviving personal sourcesEngland, any book which purports to be a biography of a 151891-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>}} {{newreview1908|author=Paul Strathern|title=The Artist, The Philosopher and The WarriorBrian Anderson|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=The interaction between three very differentOriginally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not to say contrastinggo unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, personalities three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the Renaissance period sets the scene for what promises to be an intriguing titleheterosexual Havelock Ellis. In 1502 Exploring the paths margins of Cesare Borgiasociety and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, notorious son of but barely talked about in the equally infamous Pope Alexander VI, Niccolò MachiavelliUK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the intellectual and diplomatscientific understanding of homosexuality, and Leonardo da Vinci, at beginning the time best known as a military engineer though remembered today primarily as a great artiststruggle for recognition and equality, were destined leading to crossthe milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951212</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Timothy W Ryback1910593508|title=Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His LifeApollo|rating=4.5|genreauthor=History|summary=As the fictional schoolboy hero Nigel Molesworth might have said, 'any fule kno' that Adolf Hitler was notorious for burning books. Nevertheless he was also an avid collector and passionate reader, as around 1200 surviving volumes once in his possession now in the Rare Book Division of the Library of Congress, and a smaller quantity in Brown University, Rhode Island, demonstrate. Among them were world literature classics, such as 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and 'Gulliver's Travels'. He also owned an edition of the collected works of ShakespeareMatt Fitch, in hand-tooled Moroccan leather with a gold-embossed eagle flanked by his initials on the spine. The Bard, he once said, was greatly superior to Goethe Chris Baker and Schiller.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532174</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Druin Burch|title=Taking the MedicineMike Collins
|rating=5
|genre=History
|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>
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{{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
|rating=5
|genre=History
|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>
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