Difference between revisions of "Newest History Reviews"

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[[Category:History|*]]
 
[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]]
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[[Category:New Reviews|History]]__NOTOC__ <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
==History==
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{{Frontpage
__NOTOC__
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|isbn=1785633457
{{newreview
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|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car
|author=Simon Jenkins
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|author=Clive Wilkinson
|title=A Short History of England  
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|rating=5
|rating=4
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|genre=Travel
|genre=History
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|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?
|summary=Most of us see history rather like a cloud. We're aware of the great mass of it, seeing some parts more clearly than others, but perhaps struggling to bring it into a straight line.  Some parts we will have studied at school, or read about out of interest but these parts will be balanced by other periods when we will be woefully ignorant of some of the most basic facts.  I've studied the Tudors in some depth at various points in my life – but I would struggle to tell you much about the Stuarts.  What was needed was a concise history of England in one volume and written for the adult reader who would simply like to be more informed, but not over-burdened.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684617</amazonuk>
 
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=B09BLBP3P8
|author=Bettany Hughes
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|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940
|title=The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life
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|author=Frederic Seager
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
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|genre=History
|summary=We don't know much about Socrates. For someone whose ideas are still so relevant so long after his death, his life is something of a mystery. He didn't like to write things down, and so Hughes begins this book by saying that it may have something of a 'Socrates-sized hole' in it. What we do see is the city of Athens, and the hugely important changes which were going on there while Socrates was alive. In Athens we see the beginnings of democracy, the seedlings of some of the ideas that we take for granted today, such as freedom of speech, and the right to a fair trial. This was an important time in the development of modern values, and Socrates was an important man. He was not only a brilliant thinker, he was also a man that didn't quite fit, infuriating to converse with, yet fascinating to be around.
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|summary=Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the ''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in to save the day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was of vital significance in how the war played out.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554054</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=3756228711
|author=Derek Wilson
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|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
|title=Calamities and Catastrophes: The Ten Absolutely Worst Years in History
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|author=Hans Bodmer
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=As Wilson rightly points out, history is generally written by the winners.  This book turns the tables by looking at ten of the worst episodes from the point of view of those who were on the losing side, from the sixth to the late twentieth centuries.  Starting with the plague and war of 541-2 which accelerated the collapse of the Roman Empire, to the recent Rwandan genocide in which the death toll over just a few months probably exceeded a million, history has had an uncomfortable habit of repeating itself.
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|summary=''The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595457</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of the Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, told in a mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote.  
|author=Roger Moorhouse
 
|title=Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler's Capital, 1939-45
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=Berlin at War is an account of the day to day lives of the ordinary people of Berlin, the then capital of Nazi Germany, during the Second World War. Berlin was heavily bombed throughout much of the war, and suffered greatly as the symbolic target of Allied forces at the end.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551896</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene
|author=Jacqueline Percival
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|title=Fritz and Kurt
|title=Elbow Grease: How our Grandmothers and Great-Grandmothers Kept House
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|rating=4
|rating=3.5
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|genre=Confident Readers
|genre=History
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|summary=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' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switchBut this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms.  ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of JewsThese in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…
|summary=Sometimes I look at the housework that needs to be done and it seems like a mountain that has to be climbedIt's not until I look back at the work that my mother, her mother and even my great grandmother had to do to keep the house clean and free of pests as well as doing all the laundry that I realise that my problems are more of a molehill and a lot less strenuous than their daily grind ever wasJacqueline Percival has taken a look back at the way that things really were for the women who went before us – and in those days housework generally was down to the woman in the house.
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|isbn=024156574X
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956559530</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=John Henry Phillips
|author=Laura Schwartz
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|title=The Search
|title=A Serious Endeavour: Gender, Education and Community at St Hugh's, 1886-2011
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=
 
'A Serious Endeavour' is an account of the role of one Oxford college in the history of higher education for women. When it was first founded in 1886 there were very different views on what such education should be, even among its supporters. The university would not even grant female students degrees until 1920, and students were allowed to choose their own course of study and whether they would take formal exams or not before this.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668515X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Elizabeth Cooke
 
|title=The Damnation of John Donellan: A Mysterious Case of Death and Scandal in Georgian England
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Truth is stranger than fiction - but it is not always this gripping. The Boughtons of Lawford Hall, Warwickshire, have a colourful history, including the ghost of One-Handed Boughton, who haunted their land long before this new misfortune befell them. With marriages creating more branches of family, delicate relationships abound and help to shape the complex events detailed in the book. We begin with Sir Theodosius Boughton, heir to the estate when he comes of age, suffering from venereal disease. He is obliged to take medication and is well known for neglecting the recommendations of physicians. One fateful morning, he takes a new medicine, and dies in agony.
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|summary=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 latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, 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 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 vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668482X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1472146182
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Stacy Schiff
 
|title=Cleopatra: A Life
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Stacey Schiff's biography starts more of less from Cleopatra's infamous meeting with Caesar, where she sneaks into his rooms in a sack. This is one of the most popular images of Cleopatra in the public consciousness and Schiff happily refutes the image of her emerging as a well polished seductress, pointing out that anyone who had been carried in a sack for a considerable period of time will more likely be fairly dishevelled. Schiff takes us through from this moment up to Cleopatra's much dramatised death, and beyond, to the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075353956X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Shirin Ebadi
 
|title=The Golden Cage: Three Brothers, Three Choices, One Destiny
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|summary=Dr Ebadi is currently living in exile, fearing for her safety, should she return to Iran in the foreseeable future.  Her Prologue describes a violent and bloody reaction to what was a peaceful situation involving wives, mothers and sisters.  Boulders and large stones were thrown at elderly, defenseless women without a moment's hesitation. A taste of things to come?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0979845645</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn= B09F4CTKJR
|author=Frances Wilson
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|title= Flights for Freedom
|title=How to Survive the Titanic or the Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay
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|author= Steven Burgauer
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
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|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=As I read 'How to Survive the Titanic' I was conscious that we're only a matter of months away from the centenary of the sinking – and a slew of media to mark the occasion. Given that the subject has been mined extensively over the years it will be interesting to see whether there's anything new to be said about the tragedy. It's a subject which has always fascinated me – and it was with a sense of anticipation that I opened the book.
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|summary=It's the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809222</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0578761718
|author=Frank McLynn
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|title=The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship
|title=The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph 1942-45
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|author=Nancy Carver
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=I'm no military historian; I'm not really interested in war. In the Second World War, if push came to shove, I would probably have claimed pacificism. But when this paperback version of the recently published hardback came up, by prolific and highly-esteemed historian Frank McLynn, I just had to read it. The subject is very special in our family, because “Grandad was there”. Grandad fought over the tennis court at Kohima, and he has carried the trauma in his head to this day. Frank McLynn describes that particular battle as “... a scene from Hieronymus Bosch out of Passchendaele”. I knew I had to steel myself to read this book, and was very pleased that the author wrote sensitively about the reality of close combat for lily livers like mine.
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|summary=The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, the original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the 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 its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in the grounds of Westminster College, the church was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551780</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1784385166
|author=Nathaniel Philbrick
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|title=The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany
|title=The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Big Horn
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|author=Roger Moorhouse
|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-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>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Robert Knapp
 
|title=Invisible Romans: 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 the University of California, will be welcomed 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>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kevin Mitchell
 
|title=Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Garden, and the Golden Age of Boxing
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Sport
 
|summary=Despite not being a particular fan of the sport of boxing, Kevin Mitchell's compelling knowledge of the personalities involved in the fight game in the 20th century, coupled with a staccato writing style which got my attention quickly and kept it to the very last page, meant this book actually rose far above my expectations.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224075098</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=John Dickie
 
|title=Blood Brotherhoods: The Rise of the Italian Mafias
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|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 off-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.
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|summary=What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. 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 period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts. 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340963921</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)
|author=Alex Kershaw
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|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
|title=To Save a People
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat of Jewish ancestry, was without doubt one of the heroes of the Second World War.  This book, by one of the war's foremost modern historians, tells the story of his humanitarian work which began with his posting to Budapest in July 1944.
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|summary=I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know.  I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side.  This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539136</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1684056993
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0648684806
|author=Andrew Wheen
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|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist
|title=Dot-Dash To Dot.Com
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|author=John Holliday
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
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|genre=Biography
|summary=You know exactly what you're getting when you read the summary of Andrew Wheen's ''Dot-Dash To Dot.Com''. ''How Modern Telecommunications Evolved from the Telegraph to the Internet'' sums it up perfectly. This is a history of technology and the people involved in creating that technology. It serves as a primer for anyone with an interest or need to know about telecommunications.
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|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA.  At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers.  Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441967591</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1783784350
|author=Nigel Hamilton
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|title=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History
|title=American Caesars: Lives of the US Presidents, from Franklin D Roosevelt to George W Bush
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|author=Esther Rutter
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|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 of themFirstly, 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 lifeSuetonius 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.
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|summary=It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets.  The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mindJanuary was going to be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscapeShe'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the farm'' - and learned to spin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friendThis was in her blood.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520419</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ciaran O Murchadha
 
|title=The Great Famine: Ireland's Agony 1845-1852
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=In August 1845, reports began to circulate of the destruction of growing potatoes in the south of England, killed by a mysterious and so far unknown plant disease.  As yet, the scientific aspects of what was given the name of 'blight' were not fully recognised, let alone understoodAt the end of the month, small instances of failure in the potato crop in Ireland were reported, but there seemed to be no cause for alarm until the main crop was dug out in October.  Only then did it become apparent that an 'awful plague' had appeared in several areas, with decomposing vegetables producing a strong, foul stench that assailed the nostrils of cultivators and passers-by alike.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847252176</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1789017977
|author=Richard Holmes
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|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II
|title=Churchill's Bunker: The Secret Headquarters at the Heart of Britain's Victory
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|author=Wendy Williams
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Nowadays, when there is a security threat it seems to be mandatory to whisk the leader and other important personages off to a secret location deep inside a mountain or in a distant forest, but Churchill fought his war – our war – from a series of basement rooms right in the heart of London and within sight of Buckingham Palace and the Houses of ParliamentThe Cabinet War Rooms didn't have their own air supply, were infested with vermin and lacked proper toilet facilities, but they were Churchill's choice.  He spent a few nights down in the CWR but usually lived in the No 10 Annex upstairs – throughout the worst of the bombing.
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|summary=Ronnie Williams was the son of 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 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age.  For a while the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyleOne thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life.  He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682312</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1980891117
|title=Russia: A 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East
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|title=G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart
|author=Martin Sixsmith
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|author=John Webley
|rating=5
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|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Art
|summary=As a former BBC correspondent in Moscow at the time that the Cold War was ending, Sixsmith is in a unique position to write a history of Russia, based partly on research and partly on his own experiences, after having witnessed at first hand some of the upheavals in recent years which play such an important part in the story.
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|summary=George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849900728</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1789016304
|author=Ben Shephard
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|title=War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam
|title=The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War
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|author=Melanie Martin
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War Europe was in tatters, and millions of its citizens were stranded far from homeHow to cope with these Displaced Persons was one of the biggest issues of the immediate post-war periodIn 'The Long Road Home' Ben Shephard tells their story.
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|summary=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 war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupationMost 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, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspectIt's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0712600590</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1908745819
|author=Karen Blixen
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|title=Surfacing
|title=Out Of Africa
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|author=Kathleen Jamie
 
|rating=5
 
|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>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Paul Addison and Jeremy A Crang
 
|title=Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain's Finest Hour, May-September 1940
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=History
 
|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 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.
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|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 author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.''  Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am.  Add to that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on 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 quickly.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548747</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0857058320
|author=Betty Lussier
+
|title=Lord Of All the Dead
|title=Intrepid Woman: Betty Lussier's Secret War, 1942-1945
+
|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
 
|rating=4
 
|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>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Martin Pugh
 
|title=Speak for Britain!: A New History of the Labour Party
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|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 the workers, it never became a fully working class party.  James Keir Hardie may have been a genuine socialist, but some of the senior figures who followed were recruited from middle and upper-class Conservative backgrounds.
+
|summary=''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the 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 the centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520788</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0008294011
|author=Benjamin Mandelkern
+
|title=How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
|title=Escape from the Nazis: The Incredible and Inspiring Saga of Two Young Jews on the Run in World War II Poland
+
|author=Ece Temelkuran
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Do we all have it in us?  Would you as a Pole in 1940s Poland, who like as not had been 'educated' in the horrendous evil of Jews by your church - would you ignore Nazi death threats and countless opportunities for the wrong thing to be said, for 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=3.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=Back in the 1850s it 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 to be debate, 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 to be acrimonious and devious and came 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, 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 to them leaving the country, and continuing through to show how they settled in America, trading beaver skins 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 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, in many ways, they've remained the same.  Generally the weddings are of kings, queens or heirs to the throne but sometimes there's a glimpse of how the minor royals have managed their nuptials.  The book is lavishly illustrated and is probably as un-put-downable as anything which is basically a history book.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091943779</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Shrabani Basu
 
|title=Victoria and Abdul: The True Story of the Queen's Closest Confidant
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Abdul Karim was a 24-year-old assistant clerk at Agra Jail when he was granted the opportunity of a lifetime – to leave India, travel to England and find employment as personal attendant to the great Empress herself, Queen VictoriaWithin a year of her employing him and his introducing her to the delights of curry, she promoted himHe would no longer be a mere servant, and henceforth he was now her teacher and clerk, or Munshi, with responsibility for instructing her in Indian affairs and the Urdu languageTo the dismay and ill-concealed anger of nearly all her family and household, he suddenly became one of the most conspicuous figures in the royal entourage.
+
|summary=A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question ''Discuss the factors which led to...'' I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to.  I think now that I do knowWe are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752458531</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1788037812
|author=Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard
+
|title=The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908
|title=The Colosseum
+
|author=Brian Anderson
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=The Colosseum is the most famous and instantly recognisable monument to have survived from the classical world. Most readily associated with the gladiatorial games and contests between the Christians and the lions so beloved by imperial Rome, it originally held over 50,000 spectators, a number now completely dwarfed by the four million or more visitors who come each year.
+
|summary=Originally 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 go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, 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 heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684706</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1910593508
|author=Richard Jenkyns
+
|title=Apollo
|title=Westminster Abbey: A Thousand Years of National Pageantry
+
|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=History
 
|summary=Few if any buildings in Britain personify history, and are steeped in so much, as Westminster Abbey.  As the author says in his introduction, it is the most complex church in the world in terms of not only history but also functions and memories, perhaps the most complex building of any kind.  In this compact paperback history, an updated edition of a hardback first published in 2004, he tells the story very readably from its foundation by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century to the preparations for the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William in 2011.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685346</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Alan Titchmarsh
 
|title=When I Was A Nipper
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=There's something about Alan Titchmarsh that you can't help liking.  He's got a wry sense of humour, seems unfailingly positive and, best of all, was born in my home town of Ilkley.  You really can't get much better than that, now can you?  'When I Was A Nipper' is a look not just at his life in the fifties (although there ''is'' a lot about him) but about the way that things were then.  There's an unspoken question about what we can learn from how we lived then and how we can apply this to our lives today.  It's pure nostalgia only lightly seasoned with the reality of outside privies and harsh working conditions.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184990152X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Rodric Braithwaite
 
|title=Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=In 1979, the Soviet Union decided to move into Afghanistan, and special forces killed the Afghan president. What was initially planned as a fairly modest expedition which would see them stabilise the government, train up the army and police, and then withdraw within a year, turned into 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 forever. What went wrong, and why has Afghanistan proved such a difficult place for foreign powers – ranging from the British in the 19th century, to the Russians in this book, to the current armies engaged in the country – to get any sort of foothold?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846680549</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Stephanie Williams
 
|title=Running the Show: Governors of the British Empire 1857-1912
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=For some, the glory days of the British Empire were the closing years of the Victorian era and the 19th century. Government ministers in London, and doubtless Queen Victoria herself, would glance at a map of the world and bask in reflected glory at the generous expanses of land coloured red, 'the empire where the sun never sets', to use the old cliché.
+
|summary=This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of this, the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to the book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and still felt too short.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918040</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1786331047
|author=Duff Hart-Davis
+
|title=The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family
|title=The War That Never Was
+
|author=Helen Rappaport
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=In the 1960's, an Egyptian general with delusions of grandeur is trying to conquer the Arab world, starting with Yemen. The new Imam, having previously disobeyed the general's orders to assassinate his own father, has fled to the hills. The British are wary of getting officially involved so turn to more subtle channels. Jim Johnson, an underwriter at Lloyd's who claims to have been arrested for attempted murder at the tender age of 8 when he attacked an Italian maid abusing a cat, is the man asked to run a secret operation. His response? 'I've nothing particular to do in the next few days. I might have a go.' Putting together a team of mercenaries, he sends them to Yemen to fight what will become, as the subtitle of the book states, Britain's most secret battle.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846058252</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Adrian Tinniswood
 
|title=Pirates Of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century Mediterranean
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=In the early 17th century the North African coast was a particularly dangerous place to sail near due to the prevalence of pirates there ready to plunder the cargo of ships. In this truly captivating account author Adrian Tinnisworth looks at these corsairs – focusing on Englishmen such as John Ward, who became so renowned that plays about him and Dutchman Simon Danseker managed to outsell
+
|summary=The basic facts about the deaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have long since been established. For the last few months of their lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, their children and few remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. To prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to death in circumstances which, once the news was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in Europe.
King Lear!
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523868</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Charles Emmerson
 
|title=The Future History of the Arctic: How climate, resources and geopolitics are reshaping the north, and why it matters to the world
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=Charles Emmerson examines the past history of Arctic exploration, economic exploitation and development and the policies of governments of countries which include Arctic territory (and others), with the aim of understanding the present and predicting the future better. He explains the apparently contradictory title in some detail in the Introduction. While history is about the past, 'ideas about the future have changed over time'. Also, the future of the Arctic will be shaped by its history.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523531</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Home and Family Reviews]]
|author=Alex Butterworth
 
|title=The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=In deciding to write about political upheaval across Europe, including Russia, Alex Butterworth has chosen a massive topic for this entertaining book. So massive, in fact, that when I tried reading it without first looking through the pen pictures at the start of the main players I was quickly completely lost. My mistake – the short, sharp, pen pictures, which cover sixteen pages and detail all the major anarchists and secret agents are completely invaluable and helped my reading of the book enormously.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551926</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 12:03, 20 March 2023

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Review of

Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car by Clive Wilkinson

5star.jpg Travel

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? Full Review

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Review of

Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940 by Frederic Seager

4.5star.jpg History

Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the Phoney War. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in to save the day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was of vital significance in how the war played out. Full Review

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Review of

CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena' by Hans Bodmer

4star.jpg History

The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.

Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of the Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, told in a mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote. Full Review

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Review of

Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene

4star.jpg Confident Readers

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' each 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's will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. Kristallnacht happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about… Full Review

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Review of

The Search by John Henry Phillips

5star.jpg History

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 latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, 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 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 vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties? Full Review

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Review of

Flights for Freedom by Steven Burgauer

4.5star.jpg Historical Fiction

It's the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel. Full Review

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Review of

The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship by Nancy Carver

4.5star.jpg History

The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, the original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the 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 its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in the grounds of Westminster College, the church was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill. Full Review

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Review of

The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany by Roger Moorhouse

5star.jpg History

What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. 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 period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.  Full Review

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Review of

Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes by Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)

4.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know. I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989. Full Review

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Review of

Clara Colby: The International Suffragist by John Holliday

4star.jpg Biography

The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening. Full Review

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Review of

This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History by Esther Rutter

5star.jpg History

It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscape. She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - a free-range child on the farm - and learned to spin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in her blood. Full Review

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Review of

Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II by Wendy Williams

4star.jpg History

Ronnie Williams was the son of 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 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942. Full Review

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Review of

G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart by John Webley

4.5star.jpg Art

George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book. Full Review

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Review of

War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam by Melanie Martin

5star.jpg History

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 war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies. Full Review

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Review of

Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie

5star.jpg History

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 author considering an older, less tethered sense of herself. Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on 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 quickly. Full Review

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Review of

Lord Of All the Dead by Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

4star.jpg History

Lord Of All the Dead is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the 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 the centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side. Full Review

0008294011.jpg

Review of

How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship by Ece Temelkuran

4.5star.jpg History

A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question Discuss the factors which led to... I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to. I think now that I do know. We are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth. Full Review

1788037812.jpg

Review of

The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908 by Brian Anderson

5star.jpg History

Originally 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 go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, 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 heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967. Full Review

1910593508.jpg

Review of

Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins

5star.jpg History

This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of this, the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to the book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and still felt too short. Full Review

1786331047.jpg

Review of

The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family by Helen Rappaport

5star.jpg History

The basic facts about the deaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have long since been established. For the last few months of their lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, their children and few remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. To prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to death in circumstances which, once the news was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in Europe. Full Review

Move on to Newest Home and Family Reviews