Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|History]]==History==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Nathaniel Philbrick|title=The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Big Horn|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=I have to admit that I was rather underinformed about Custer before reading this book; I knew that he was killed at the Battle of Little Big Horn and that opinion seemed to be split on whether he was an arrogant and over<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-confident commander or a dashing and brilliant one. From reading this admirably even-handed account, not just of his famous Last Stand but also of the events leading up to it, I found out a huge amount about him and the other personalities involved in his defeat.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521245</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Knapp1785633457|title=Invisible RomansCharging Around: Prostitutes, Outlaws, Slaves, Gladiators, Ordinary Men and Women … the Romans that History Forgot|rating=4|genre=History|summary=This academic title by Robert Knapp, Professor Emeritus at Exploring the University Edges of California, will be welcomed England by serious students of the Roman Empire. It goes without saying that this research provides a valuable supplement to the existing academic literature. From the meticulous attention to detail, I suspect that amassing the material was a labour of love over a lifetime of analysing more prominent Roman citizens. Clues have been inferred from classical literature, culled from epitaphs and deduced from archaeological finds (particularly Pompeii), since hardly any evidence of ordinary folks' lives has otherwise survived. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684013</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewElectric Car|author=Kevin Mitchell|title=Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Garden, and the Golden Age of BoxingClive Wilkinson

|genre=SportTravel|summary=Despite not being Clive Wilkinson has a particular fan history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the sport idea of boxing, Kevin Mitchell's compelling knowledge exploring the edges of the personalities involved England in the fight game in the 20th centuryan electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, coupled with it should be a staccato writing style which got my attention quickly pleasant holiday for Clive and kept his wife, Joan, shouldn't it to the very last page, meant this book actually rose far above my expectations.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224075098</amazonuk>?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John DickieB09BLBP3P8|title=Blood BrotherhoodsNeville Chamberlain's War: The Rise of the Italian Mafias|rating=5|genre=History|summary=There can be few people who are unaware of the 'mafia' particularly as the word is used as a catch-all to cover the Italian criminal fraternity – and by extension the offHow Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-shoots which have spread throughout the world – but the south of Italy has three major mafias. Sicily is the birthplace of and home to Cosa Nostra, whilst Naples and its hinterland hosts the camorra. In Calabria, possibly the poorest region of Italy, you'll find the 'ndrangheta. There are plenty of myths and legends about the birth of the criminal organisations, but Professor John Dickie has looked at their early history from 1851 through to the liberation of Italy at the end of the Second World War. He looks at their rituals and their methods and much of what you will read has been a secret until now.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340963921</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1940|author=Alex Kershaw|title=To Save a PeopleFrederic Seager

|summary=Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat of Jewish ancestry, was without doubt one Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the heroes early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the Second World ''Phoney War''. This bookWe remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, by one of the war's foremost modern historiansbreaking out, tells and Churchill coming in to save the story day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was of his humanitarian work which began with his posting to Budapest vital significance in July 1944how the war played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539136</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Wheen3756228711|title=Dot-Dash To Dot.ComCDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans Bodmer

|summary=The Premise is simple: take twelve men (and unfortunately they are all men, but that's not the author's fault) who have achieved high office and look at each The history of them. Firstly, take a look at the road to the high office, then how they performed once they reached their goal and finally a look at their private lifedevelopment of IT could fill books of several hundred pages. Suetonius did it first when he wrote ''The Twelve Caesars'' and now Nigel Hamilton has taken the same journey with ''American Caesars'', a remarkably in-depth look at twelve consecutive American presidents from the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, starting with Franklin D Roosevelt and finishing with George W Bush.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520419</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Ciaran O Murchadha|title=The Great Famine: Ireland's Agony 1845-1852 |rating=4Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that.5|genre=History|summary=In August 1845, reports began He has chosen to circulate of tell us about the destruction of growing potatoes in the south of Englandshort, killed by a mysterious and so far unknown plant disease. As yetbut explosive, the scientific aspects history of what was given the name of 'blight' were not fully recognisedControl Data Company, let alone understood. At the end of the month, small instances of failure in the potato crop in Ireland were reportedCDC, but there seemed to be no cause for alarm until the main crop was dug out in Octoberwhom he worked. Only then did it become apparent that an It'awful plague' had appeared s a fascinating tale, told in several areas, with decomposing vegetables producing a strong, foul stench that assailed the nostrils mixture of cultivators technological summary and passers-by alikewry anecdote.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847252176</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Richard HolmesJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Churchill's Bunker: The Secret Headquarters at the Heart of Britain's VictoryFritz and Kurt

|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=NowadaysWe 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 there is a security threat it seems to be mandatory comes to whisk the leader synagogue choir and other important personages off at a vocational school. Kurt has to a secret location deep inside a mountain or in a distant forest, but Churchill fought his war make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – our war – from a series of basement rooms right in the heart of London Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and within sight of Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliamentworkmanlike as a light switch. The Cabinet War Rooms didnBut this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler't have their own air supplys will, were infested with vermin and lacked proper toilet facilitiesinstead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, but they were Churchill's choiceinvite them in with open arms. He spent a few nights down ''Kristallnacht'' happened in the CWR but usually lived Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the No 10 Annex upstairs – throughout the worst round-ups of the bombingJews.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682312</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Russia: A 1,000-Year Chronicle of These in their turn leave the Wild East|author=Martin Sixsmith|rating=5|genre=History|summary=As a former BBC correspondent in Moscow younger Kurt at the time that the Cold War was ending, Sixsmith is in a unique position home with his mother and sisters anxious to write a history hear word of Russiaan evacuation to Britain or the US, based partly on research while Fritz and partly on his own experiencesfather are, after having witnessed at first hand some of unknown initially to each other, packed off on the upheavals in recent years which play such an important part in same train to Buchenwald and the storystone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849900728</amazonuk>024156574X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ben ShephardJohn Henry Phillips|title=The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World WarSearch

|summary=In Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the immediate aftermath latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the Second World War Europe was in tatterstitular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and millions of its citizens were stranded far that he was lucky to survive when it sank from homebeneath him. How The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to cope with these Displaced Persons was one of everyone else aboard, the biggest issues vast majority of the immediate post-war periodwhom perished. In 'The Long Road Home' Ben Shephard tells Who else would make such promises to someone in their story.nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0712600590</amazonuk>1472146182

 {{newreview|author=Karen Blixen|title=Out Of Africa|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=It's more than a quarter of a century since I first saw the film ''Out of Africa'' and it's one of the few that have stayed with me over the intervening years. It wasn't just the story, but the personality of Karen Blixen and the wonderful landscape of the Ngong Hills, south of Nairobi, in Kenya's Rift Valley. I remember looking for this book at the time, but being unable to find it, so the opportunity to read it now was too good to miss.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951437</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Addison and Jeremy A CrangB09F4CTKJR|title=Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain's Finest Hour, May-September 1940|rating=4|genre=History|summary=The Home Intelligence Department had been set up by the government to assess home morale by studying immediate reactions to specific events and to find out public opinion on important issues, including pacifism. One reason for this was 'to provide a basis Flights for publicity', that is, to plan propaganda and test its effectiveness. The reports drew on various sources, including Mass Observation, a market research style Wartime Social Survey, staff listening to conversations on the way to work, and visiting pubs and other places where lots of people went and talked to each other.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548747</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Betty Lussier|title=Intrepid Woman: Betty Lussier's Secret War, 1942-1945|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Betty Lussier was born in Alberta, Canada. At the height of the depression her father bought a Maryland farm at a bank foreclosure sale, they crossed the border to the States and settled down to the hard life of raising dairy cattle and the crops needed to feed them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1591144493</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFreedom|author=Martin Pugh|title=Speak for Britain!: A New History of the Labour PartySteven Burgauer

|genre=HistoryHistorical Fiction|summary=Since the Labour Representation Committee came into existence in February 1900, the party in Britain which it spawned has had a chequered and often contrary existence. Ironically, as Pugh demonstrates, while it may have been formed to represent It's the workers, it never became a fully working class party. James Keir Hardie may have been a genuine socialist, but some later stages of the senior figures who followed were recruited from middle World War I and upper-class Conservative backgrounds.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520788</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Benjamin Mandelkern|title=Escape from the Nazis: The Incredible and Inspiring Saga of Two Young Jews on United States has just entered the Run in World War II Poland|rating=3conflict.5|genre=Biography|summary=Do we all have it in us? Would you as Petrol Petronus is a Pole in 1940s Poland, young American who like as not had been 'educated' in the horrendous evil of Jews by your church - would you ignore Nazi death threats has signed up and countless opportunities for the wrong thing to be said, for joined the truth to be let out, for betrayal - would you help a Jewish life survive?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1550280554</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bernard Porter|title=The Battle of the Styles: Society, Culture and the Design of a new Foreign Office, 1855 - 61|rating=317 Aero Squadron.5|genre=History|summary=Back in the 1850s it This company was mooted that Whitehall required some new public buildings, primarily in the form of a new Foreign Office. Such matters are never quite so simple as deciding on the need and arranging the construction and completion: there was first US Aero Squadron to be debatetrained in Canada, occasionally about the need for a new building but primarily about the form it should take and the style in which it should be built. This proved first to be acrimonious and devious and came attached to be known as 'The Battle of the Styles'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441167390</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Richard Lucas|title=Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Take one personable failed actress, embittered by lack of success at home in the USA, and conspire to land her living in Germany as WW2 breaks out. What chance her becoming an American, female Lord Haw-Haw, being paid by Germany to broadcast entertaining, dissuasive propaganda worldwide on shortwave radio? Anybody could guess it would take innumerable factors, circumstances and events, RAF and they're all here in this entertaining, eye-opening and educational biography.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149431</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nick Bunker|title=Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Using hundreds of previously overlooked documents, British historian Nick Bunker tells the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, starting from the religious climate in England which led first to them leaving be sent into the country, and continuing through to show how they settled in America, trading beaver skins skies to let them settle in New England.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951182</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alison Weir, Kate Williams, Sarah Gristwood and Tracy Borman|title=The Ring and fight the Crown: A History of Royal Weddings 1066-2011|rating=4|genre=History|summary=The Ring and the Crown is a look at almost a thousand years of royal weddings, at how they've changed and how, Germans in many ways, they've remained the sameactive combat. Generally the weddings are of kingsBut before that can happen, queens or heirs Petrol has to master flying the throne notoriously difficult but sometimes there's a glimpse of how the minor royals have managed their nuptialsmajestic Sopwith Camel. The book is lavishly illustrated and is probably as un-put-downable as anything which is basically a history book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091943779</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shrabani Basu0578761718|title=Victoria and Abdul: The True Story Inspiring History of the Queen's Closest Confidanta Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver

|summary=Abdul Karim was a 24-year-old assistant clerk The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at Agra Jail least 1181, when he it was granted first mentioned in records. Sadly, the opportunity original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a lifetime – to leave Indiadesign by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, travel to England and find employment as personal attendant to when it was again ruined by bombs during the great Empress herself, Queen VictoriaBlitz. Within a year of her employing him and his introducing her to But that wasn't the delights end of curry, she promoted him. He would no longer be its story: after a mere servantphenomenal fundraising effort, and henceforth he was now her teacher and clerkthe stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, or MunshiMissouri. There, with responsibility for instructing her in Indian affairs and the Urdu language. To the dismay and ill-concealed anger grounds of nearly all her family and householdWestminster College, he suddenly became one of the most conspicuous figures in the royal entouragechurch was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752458531</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard1784385166|title=The ColosseumThird Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse|rating=4.5

|summary=The Colosseum What is the most famous and instantly recognisable monument first image that comes to mind when you think of the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to have survived from a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the classical worldThird Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. Most readily associated with the gladiatorial games and contests between the Christians But some objects and images from that time may be less familiar to you. In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the lions so beloved by imperial Rome, it originally held over 50,000 spectators, a number now completely dwarfed by period of the four million or more visitors who come each yearThird Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684706</amazonuk> 

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Richard JenkynsLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=Westminster AbbeyTiananmen 1989: A Thousand Years of National PageantryOur Shattered Hopes

|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=Few if any buildings I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in Britain personify history, and are steeped in so muchthe second half of their teens has other priorities, as Westminster Abbeyyou know. As I certainly didn't know of the author says in his introduction, it is weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the most complex church in students before the world in terms of not only history but also functions massacre and memories, perhaps the most complex building birth of any kind. In this compact paperback historythe Tank Man image, an updated edition of I didn't know how the area had long been a hardback first published in 2004venue for political protest, he tells and I didn't know more than a spit about the story very readably from its foundation by Edward the Confessor people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in the 11th century to the preparations giving a general browser's context for the wedding whole season of Kate Middleton and Prince William protests back in 20111989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846685346</amazonuk>1684056993

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alan Titchmarsh0648684806|title=When I Was A NipperClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|summary=ThereIt was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she's something about Alan Titchmarsh that you can't help likingd never met and preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. He's got January was going to be a wry sense time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of humourthe British Isles with occasional forays abroad, seems unfailingly positive discovering and, best telling the story of all, was born in my home town of Ilkleywool's history and how it had made and changed the landscape. You really canShe't get much better than that, now can you? 'When I Was A Nipper' is d grown up on a look not just at his life sheep farm in the fifties (although there ''isSuffolk - '' a lot about him) but about free-range child on the way that things were then. Therefarm''s an unspoken question about what we can learn - and learned to spin, knit and weave from how we lived then her mother and how we can apply this to our lives todayher mother's friend. It's pure nostalgia only lightly seasoned with the reality of outside privies and harsh working conditionsThis was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184990152X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rodric Braithwaite1789017977|title=AfgantsyRonnie and Hilda's Romance: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams

|summary=In 1979, Ronnie Williams was the Soviet Union decided son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to move into Afghanistanwhether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and special forces killed the Afghan presidenthe might well have shaved a few years off his age. What was initially planned as For a fairly modest expedition which would see them stabilise while the government, train up family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the army and police, 1929 Depression and then withdraw within a five-year, turned into -old Ronnie had to adjust to a war lasting nearly a decade which left both the Russian army and the Afghan civilians counting the cost of the intervention and with their lives changed foreververy different lifestyle. What went wrong, and why has Afghanistan proved such a difficult place for foreign powers – ranging One thing he did inherit from the British in the 19th century, his father was his need to the Russians in be well-turned-out and this book, to would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the current armies engaged army at eighteen in the country – to get any sort of foothold?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846680549</amazonuk>1942.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stephanie Williams1980891117|title=Running G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the Show: Governors life of the British Empire 1857-1912George Engleheart|author=John Webley

|genre=HistoryArt|summary=For some, George Engleheart was one of the glory days leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the British Empire were 1770s to the closing years Regency era. He was also one of the Victorian era and the 19th century. Government ministers in Londonmost prolific, and doubtless Queen Victoria herselfpainting nearly 5, would glance at a map 000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the world and bask in reflected glory at the generous expanses names of each of land coloured red, 'the empire where the sun never sets'his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to use the old clichéas his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918040</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Duff Hart-Davis1789016304|title=The War That Never Wasand Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating=45

|summary=In the 1960's, an Egyptian general with delusions of grandeur is trying Melanie Martin read about what happened to conquer the Arab worldDutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, starting with Yemen. particularly in ''The new Imam, having previously disobeyed the generalDiary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's orders to assassinate his own fatherstories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, has fled but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to the hills. The British are wary of getting officially involved so turn happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to more subtle channelsGerman occupation. Jim Johnson, an underwriter at Lloyd's Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who claims to have been arrested for attempted murder at thought that the Germans might reach the tender age of 8 when he attacked an Italian maid abusing a catcity were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, is that the man asked Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to run a secret operation. His response? 'I've nothing particular to do escalate in the next few days. I might have a goway that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It' Putting together s an atrocity on a team vast scale but made up of tens of mercenaries, he sends them to Yemen to fight what will become, as the subtitle thousands of the book states, Britain's most secret battleindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846058252</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adrian Tinniswood1908745819|title=Pirates Of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century MediterraneanSurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie

|summary=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 book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of the early 17th century the North African coast was author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a particularly dangerous place to sail near due bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the prevalence natural world, of those aspects of pirates there ready to plunder the cargo poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of shipsall, about connection. In Of course, this truly captivating account author Adrian Tinnisworth looks at these corsairs – focusing book had my name on Englishmen such as John Ward, who became it. 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 renowned that plays about him and Dutchman Simon Danseker managed to outsellKing Lear!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523868</amazonuk>quickly.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Charles Emmerson0857058320|title=The Future History of Lord Of All the Arctic: How climate, resources and geopolitics are reshaping the north, Dead|author=Javier Cercas and why it matters to the worldAnne McLean (translator)

|summary=Charles Emmerson examines ''Lord Of All the past history of Arctic exploration, economic exploitation and development and Dead'' is a journey to uncover the policies of governments of countries which include Arctic territory (and others), with the aim of understanding the present author's lost ancestor's life and predicting the future betterdeath. He explains Cercas is searching for the apparently contradictory title in some detail meaning behind his great uncle's death in the IntroductionSpanish Civil War. While history is about the pastManuel Mena, Cercas'ideas about great uncle, is the future have changed figure who looms large over timethe book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Also, Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the future centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the Arctic will be shaped by its historywrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523531</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alex Butterworth0008294011|title=How to Lose a Country: The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran

|summary=In deciding to write about political upheaval across Europe, including Russia, Alex Butterworth has chosen A little while ago a massive topic for this entertaining book. So massive, friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in fact, that years to come would be discussed by A level history students when I tried reading it without first looking through faced with the pen pictures at question ''Discuss the start of the main players factors which led to...'' I agreed that she was quickly completely lost. My mistake – the short, sharp, pen pictures, which cover sixteen pages right and detail wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all the major anarchists and secret agents 'this' was leading to. I think now that I do know. We are completely invaluable in danger of losing democracy and helped my reading whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the book enormously'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551926</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Giles Milton1788037812|title=Wolfram: The Boy Who Went To War|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Giles Milton's daughter was set the task Fraternity of designing an heraldic shield which represented the most important elements of her family's history. Aware that one of her grandparents is German she included the only German symbol which she knew: a Swastika. It was this incident, which was an awkward mixture of funny and disquieting which brought about 'WolframEstranged: The Boy Who Went To War'. It's the story of Giles' father-Fight for Homosexual Rights inEngland, 1891-law, Wolfram Aïchele, who was nine years old when Hitler came to power and who found himself caught up in a situation which was none of his making and didn't accord with his own beliefs. He was a man who wanted to be a sculptor or to paint, but he was forced to become a soldier.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340837888</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1908|author=Dudley Green|title=Patrick Bronte: Father of GeniusBrian Anderson|rating=4.5

|summary=There have been many biographies about Charlotte Brontë and her siblingsOriginally passed in 1885, but very little about their fatherthe law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. It is tempting to speculate whether he would be quite so deserving of one if he had But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not been go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the father nature of such a famous familyhomosexuality appeared. Yet Dudley GreenThey were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, a retired Classics teacheras well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, has demonstrated here that he did lead an interesting life himself. Born but barely talked about in rural Ireland in 1777the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, he spent his early years there before arriving in England in 1802 and settled in Yorkshire seven years laterbeginning the struggle for recognition and equality, where he remained leading to the rest milestone legalisation of his dayssame-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752454455</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edward B Barbier1910593508|title=Scarcity Apollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Frontiers: How Economies Have Developed Through Natural Resource ExploitationMike Collins

|summary=Scarcity This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and Frontiers the passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is an ambitiousa story we know well and because of this, fascinating book the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that examines how we can fill in the world's economies have developed by exploiting natural resourcesblanks. Throughout history, states have responded These shortcuts are the only downside to natural resource scarcity by developing new frontiers, hence the titlebook. The If you've ever read a comic book begins adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the development of agriculture along the banks of the Nile slight feeling that there are scenes missing and runs right through to the present day, finally questioning whether we are entering that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a new era of natural resource scarcitygraphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and still felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521701651</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Ashdown-Hill1786331047|title=The Last Days of Richard III|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Race to Save the Romanovs: The controversy surrounding King Richard III has meant that there have been far more biographies about him than on any other pre-Tudor monarch, some extremely partisan in exonerating him of Truth Behind the crimes laid at his door, some (a minority, it seems) more than keen Secret Plans to endorse the Shakespearean portrait of a fiend in human shape, and others steering a middle course.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752454048</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewRescue Russia's Imperial Family

|summary=The city basic facts about the deaths of Ekaterinburg was once regarded as imperial Russia's gateway to the east. In 1918 it became symbolic with one Nicholas and Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the most savage executionstime for various reasons, or might one say liquidations, ever recorded in history – have long since been established. For the cold-blooded annihilation last few months of their lives in Russia the former Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandraand Tsarina, their children, the last and few remaining servants who had stayed with them were held in increasingly squalid, humiliating captivity, and their pet dogs.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520095</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts|title=Edgelands|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Around the middle of the last century and earlierTo prevent them from being rescued, books about in July 1918 the English countryside seemed very much in vogue. H.V. Morton's 'In Search of England' revolutionary regime had them all shot and associated titles spring readily bayoneted to minddeath in circumstances which, but there were a wealth of others, by authors who seemed intent on discovering once the land for themselves, sometimes anxious to document it before it news was gone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224089021</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jonathan Clark|title=A World By Itself: A History of the British Isles|rating=4|genre=History|summary=As one who has always felt most at ease with the standard chronological approach to history, driven by events and major personalities, I found the close-on 700 pages of this volume fairly demanding reading in places. It is divided into six parts, each by a different contributor with the editor himself writing the fourth. Each part is divided into Material Cultures, followed by essays on topics (not for confirmed beyond all sections) on Religious Cultures; Religiondoubt, Nationalism and Identity; and Political and National Cultures. What we have, therefore, is an overview of events from each period, more thorough horrified their relatives in some instances than others, and a certain amount of theorizing on the general social, political and even artistic background. A straightforward history through the ages – it is notEurope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0712664963</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Peter Hart|title=Gallipoli|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Early in 1915 the Allied Powers attempted to seize the Dardanelles, capture Constantinople and eliminate Turkey, who had joined the Central Powers, from the First World War. The campaign ended in failure and retreat, yet for many years it was portrayed as a brilliant strategy undermined by bad luck and incompetent commanders. This painstakingly-researched account shows that this was not the case. It was more a matter of a wild scheme which was poorly planned and doomed from the start, compounding the Allies' problems by diverting large numbers of troops from attacking Germans on the Western Front, where they would arguably have been better employed. In his introduction he calls the eight-month exercise 'an epic tragedy with an incredible heroic resilience displayed by the soldiers', yet ultimately 'a futile and costly sideshow for all the combatants.' It was a huge drain Move on Allied military resources, involving nearly half a million troops, with the British Empire losing about 205,000 – 115,000 killed, wounded or missing and 90,000 evacuated sick – while the French lost 47,000, and the Turkish over 251,000.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681596</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Patrick Dillon and P J Lynch|title=The Story of Britain|rating=5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=Author Patrick Dillon has put together a clear, well-written and beautifully concise story of Britain, summing up the history of Britain and Ireland in a little over 320 pages. Significant events, ranging from the Norman Conquest to the South Sea Bubble, and groups of people ranging from highwaymen to the Romantic poets, are each dealt with in between 1 and 3 pages written in Dillon's chatty, easy to read style. There are also maps, including those of the D-Day landings and the Civil War battles, a timeline for each major period (Middle Ages, Tudors, Stuarts, Georgians, Victorians and Twentieth Century) and some gorgeous illustrations by former Kate Greenaway winner PJ Lynch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406311928</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Edward Pearce|title=Pitt the Elder: Man of War|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, and Prime Minister from 1766 to 1768, has come down to us through the ages as the great eighteenth century equivalent of Winston Churchill, one of the great men of the British Empire in its earlier days, and the man who led England triumphantly through the Seven Years War of 1756-63. During the 'year of victories' in 1759, Quebec was captured, the combined English and Prussian forces defeated the French at Minden, [[Newest Home and the army won a famous victory at Quiberon Bay. For this, Pitt took – or was accorded by generations of historians – much of the credit.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951433</amazonuk>}}Family Reviews]]