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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=Peter Englund
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|author=Clive Wilkinson
|title=The Beauty and the Sorrow: An intimate history of the first world war
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=In simple terms the First World War, like most (if not all) conflicts has come down to us largely as a four-year sequence of events, an acknowledgement of defeat by one side, and a peace agreement.  Yet there are many different ways of telling its history, and as Englund tells us in his preface, this is not a book about what it '''was''', but about what it was '''like'''.  Though a series of snapshots in words, he shows us various stages of the conflict and its effect on people.  His emphasis is not so much events and processes, but more the feelings, impressions, experiences and moods of individuals caught up in the period.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683424</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Paul Oppenheimer
 
|title=Machiavelli: A Life Beyond Ideology
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Machiavelli, 'the first philosopher to define politics as treachery', has probably been better known as an adjective, Machiavellian being a synonym for duplicity in statecraft, than as a historical person.  Interestingly, the term 'Machiavel' became common in English usage as an adjective and noun around 1570, although none of his works were translated into the language for another seventy years or so after that.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847252214</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Clarissa Dickson Wright
 
|title=A History of English Food
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=History
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|genre=Travel
|summary=Writing a history of English food, and to some extent drink, must be a daunting task, but as an experienced TV presenter (as one of the ''Two Fat Ladies'' with the late Jennifer Paterson) and as one who was born in the post-war rationing world in 1947, Clarissa Dickson Wright is well placed to do so.
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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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905211856</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=B09BLBP3P8
|author=Art Spiegelman
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|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940
|title=MetaMAUS
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|author=Frederic Seager
|rating=5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=Before the Holocaust was turned into [[The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne|a child-like near-fable for all]], and before it was the focus of superb history books such as [[Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder|this]], it became a family saga of a father relating his experiences to a son, who then drew it all - featuring animals not humans - [[Maus by Art Spiegelman|Maus]].  To celebrate the twenty-five years since then, we have this brilliant look back at the creation of an equally brilliant volume.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916838</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Philip Ardagh
 
|title=Philip Ardagh's Book of Kings, Queens, Emperors and Rotten Wart-Nosed Commoners
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
|summary=If you deem a good children's historical trivia book to be one that tells you, the adult, something they didn't know about historical trivia, then this is a good example.  I didn't know George V broke his pelvis when his horse fell on him, startled by some post-WWI huzzahs.  I didn't know Charles VI of France nearly got torched in some drunken bacchanal.  The length of time Charlemagne sat on a throne (over 400 whole years (even if he wasn't wholly whole all that time)) was news to me, as was the raffle that was held (more or less) for being the unknown soldier.  Therefore this is a good book for children and the adults willing to instill some historical trivia into them.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330471732</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Timothy Snyder
 
|title=Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=The first chapter is enough.  I don't mean the preface, or introduction, that mean you start reading chapter one about an hour in, but chapter one itself, detailing as it does the way Stalin blatantly enforced collectivization on Ukraine's farms, thus killing off millions of local civilians.  The seed stock ended up being taken away as part of the grain quota to feed the rest of the Soviet Union, and hardly anybody failed to go without at some point as a result.  The first chapter here, then, is more than enough in telling us what we didn't know, explaining perfectly lucidly yet academically how and why what happened happened, and at times of quite gruesome anecdote and contemporary reportage, churning our stomachs and making us have second thoughts about reading on.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551799</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jeremy Paxman
 
|title=Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=In the 21st century, the British Empire may be an anachronism, something for which hand-wringing politicians and church leaders may be ever ready to apologise.  Many of us have grown up just as the last imperial remnants were crumbling away.  Yet its legacy is everywhere, and for better or worse will always be part of the very fabric of Britain.  As Jeremy Paxman demonstrates in this excellent overview, published as a curtain-raiser to his series on the subject, it is never very far away from us.  After a period of trying to distance ourselves from it, we seem to be on the verge of coming to terms with the simple truth that it was not so bad as it has sometimes been painted.  Moreover, it should be remembered that even if Britain emerged from the Second World War battered and broke, it still possessed sufficient imperial presence to become one of the Permanent Five on the United Nations Security Council.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919578</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sam Willis
 
|title=The Glorious First of June: Fleet Battle in the Reign of Terror
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=To be frank, I was not expecting a lot from this account of a famous maritime battle. Marine warfare histories can be rather dull, with lists of ships and mind-numbing detail that may appeal if you have an intimate knowledge of a warship's anatomy, but quite deathly for the rest of us. But I was gripped from the first page to the last by this really insightful account not just of the battle but of the whole political and historical events which inspired it.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849160384</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=John Julius Norwich
 
|title=A History of England in 100 Places: From Stonehenge to the Gherkin
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=There are many different ways of telling the history of England (indeed just England, not Wales and Scotland, as the author makes clear). This takes a very simple and very effective approach to the matter, by focusing on a hundred specific places which somehow illustrate the nation's progress from prehistoric times to today, in chronological order.
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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>1848546068</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=3756228711
|author=Nancy Mitford
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|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
|title=The Sun King
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|author=Hans Bodmer
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Nancy Mitford assumes that you'll need no introduction to Louis XIV, who ascended the throne when he was four years old and reigned for well over seventy two years. To put him in context his reign began before Charles I was executed in Whitehall, lasted through the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, the reigns of Charles I, James II, William III and into the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne.  He bridged the gap between the middle ages and the early modern era.
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|summary=''The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528886</amazonuk>
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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.  
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene
|author=Stephen O'Shea
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|title=Fritz and Kurt
|title=The Friar of Carcassonne: Revolt Against the Inquisition in the Last Days of the Cathars
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=History
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It starts with a paintingThe painting isn't the point: the subject isIn the Autumn of 1319 a Franciscan Friar stands before his accusers. Entitled ''L'Agitateur du Languedoc'' the artwork portrays the trial of Bernard Délicieux, the eponymous Friar of CarcassonneAlthough O'Shea veers clear of telling us the outcome of the trial, one cannot help feeling that it wasn't an acquittal.  Such things tended not to go down in history quite so resoundinglyNot in those days.
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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 schoolKurt 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 thereAnd us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668319X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=024156574X
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=John Henry Phillips
|author=Matthew Kelly
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|title=The Search
|title=Finding Poland
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Looking at any historical map of Poland anyone may see how its borders have changed over the centuries. Where will you find the Polish home? One answer must be that it is founded deep in the hearts of the Polish people who fought for the liberty and the integrity of the Polish homeland. Now consider the promontory of land around Vilnius, or Wilno as it was then known, which was contained inside Poland in 1921. It was an area in which the small market town of Hruzdowa, comprising some 52 buildings and just large enough to warrant a town hall, was situated. These wild borderlands – known as the Kresy - were fought over for centuries by Austrians, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians. It was here that Matthew Kelly's great-grandfather, who had imbibed the values and élan of the dashing officer class, Rafal Ryzewscy, came to teach with his clever young wife, Hanna. They were deeply committed to progress through education and to peaceably raising their two little daughters. However, the dreadful and calamitous year of 1939, was approaching when Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland in the most cynical pact.
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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>0099515997</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1472146182
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn= B09F4CTKJR
|author=Mick Conefrey
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|title= Flights for Freedom
|title=How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt: A Handbook for the Lady Adventurer
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|author= Steven Burgauer
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
|genre=Travel
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|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Scott, Amundsen, Bleriot, Stanley and Livingstone, John Glenn, et all - any child should be drummed out of school if they can't name half a dozen explorers, travel pioneers and adventurers. But give them a gold star if they can name a single female entrant to history's list.  Hence this book, for while some mountains have been topped by a lady first of all, and some landmark achievements by the guys have been quickly followed by the gals, there is just too much ground to be made up in recognising what the fairer sex have done in the world of, well, going round our world.
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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>1851688412</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0578761718
|author=David Bennett
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|title=The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship
|title=A Magnificent Disaster: The Failure of the Market Garden, the Arnhem Operation, September 1944
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|author=Nancy Carver
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=Operation Market Garden, September 1944 is encapsulated for most people in the Hollywood movie "A Bridge Too Far" which, like most movies, gets some of it right and some of it wrong.
 
 
 
Such anyway is Bennett's assessment. So what is the true story of what one Major Norton called a magnificent disaster, perhaps consciously echoing that judgement on the charge of the Light Brigade in a far earlier conflict "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre"?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>193514989X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lynn Peril
 
|title=Swimming in the Steno Pool: A Retro Guide to Making It in the Office
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=The subtitle of this book suggests a survival guide to secretarial work. However, this is definitely not a handbook, but an examination of the portrayal of the job and those who do it in the media and in handbooks over the last 100 years. It is an American book and all the references are to handbooks, media, popular fiction and advertising from the US, but as a secretary in Britain, I still found it relevant, interesting and very entertaining.
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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>0393338541</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1784385166
|author=Niall McCrae
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|title=The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany
|title=The Moon and Madness
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|author=Roger Moorhouse
|rating=4
 
|genre=Popular Science
 
|summary=A book entitled ''The Moon and Madness'' has the potential to be a pile of New Age hokum.  This learned and academic treatise by Niall McCrae is very far from hokum, and there is not a whiff of New Age hanging over it.  We probably all have an old folklore image in our minds of lunatics in the asylum howling at the full moon.  Of course, the very word 'lunatic' has its origins in the moon.  McCrae tries to separate myth and fact in this fascinating book.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402146</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Nigel Jones
 
|title=Tower
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=If you had to name one particular artefact which personifies the history of England, it would be hard to choose anything more appropriate than the building which has at various times been a castle, a palace, a prison, a torture chamber, and execution site, an armoury, and is now the most visited tourist attraction in the nation.
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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>0091936659</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)
|author=Annelise Freisenbruch
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|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
|title=The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars
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|rating=4.5
|rating=5
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|genre=Graphic Novels
|genre=History
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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.
|summary=Perhaps the most shocking thing to be gleaned from this fascinating history of the women who surrounded the Caesars is how easily their reputations were created, moulded and destroyed. Any woman who put a foot out of line in a culture where men held almost all the power could be accused of a litany of crimes which bore curious similarities with those of many another woman in similar circumstances. Incest and adultery were charges regularly levied against them, and the very fact that the details were identical in almost every case should give rise to suspicion about their accuracy. And yet history has accepted and spread these scandals as fact.
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|isbn=1684056993
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523930</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0648684806
|author=Daniel Allen Butler
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|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist
|title=The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathia, the Californian, and the Night the Titanic Was Lost
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|author=John Holliday
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=History
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|genre=Biography
|summary=It's now almost a century since the loss of the ''Titanic'' and although much has been written about almost every aspect of that dreadful night one point has remained a mysteryWhen the wireless operator on the 'unsinkable' Titanic radioed that the ship had hit an iceberg, had too few lifeboats for all passengers and was sinking fast there were two ships in the vicinityCaptain Arthur Rostron on the ''Carpathia'' responded to the distress signal and hastened to the Titanic's aidBut Captain Stanley Lord of the ''Californian'' did not respondThe ship's radio officer had retired for the night and Lord failed to take decisive action later that night when told about distress flares from the Titanic. The controversy as to why the two captains should have acted so differently has raged across the intervening years.
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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 brothersInstead, 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 gloriousBy 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 familyClara 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 arrivedAs the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149857</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1783784350
|author=D R Thorpe
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|title=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History
|title=Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan
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|author=Esther Rutter
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=The great-grandson of a crofter, and son-in-law of a Duke, Harold Macmillan was born in London in 1894.  Despite the well-to-do aristocratic background, his years as a young adult were marked by bad experiences in the trenches which left him with lifelong war wounds, and his early service as a Conservative Member of Parliament by the plight of the unemployed in his first constituency of Stockton.  He had much in common with another future Prime Minister, Winston Churchill; both had American mothers, and both were mavericks who were elected as Conservatives but refused to toe the party line too steadfastly.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844135411</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Simon Jenkins
 
|title=A Short History of England
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|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 lineSome 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 factsI'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.
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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 spreadsheetsThe 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 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684617</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Bettany Hughes
 
|title=The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554054</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1789017977
|author=Derek Wilson
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|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II
|title=Calamities and Catastrophes: The Ten Absolutely Worst Years in History
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|author=Wendy Williams
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=As Wilson rightly points out, history is generally written by the winnersThis 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 centuriesStarting 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=Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel WallThere'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>1907595457</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1980891117
|author=Roger Moorhouse
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|title=G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart
|title=Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler's Capital, 1939-45
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|author=John Webley
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Art
|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.
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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>0099551896</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1789016304
|author=Jacqueline Percival
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|title=War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam
|title=Elbow Grease: How our Grandmothers and Great-Grandmothers Kept House
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|author=Melanie Martin
|rating=3.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Sometimes I look at the housework that needs to be done and it seems like a mountain that has to be climbed.  It'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 was.  Jacqueline 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.
+
|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 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956559530</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1908745819
|author=Laura Schwartz
+
|title=Surfacing
|title=A Serious Endeavour: Gender, Education and Community at St Hugh's, 1886-2011
+
|author=Kathleen Jamie
|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 themWith 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.
+
|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 whyThe 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>184668482X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{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>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0857058320
|author=Shirin Ebadi
+
|title=Lord Of All the Dead
|title=The Golden Cage: Three Brothers, Three Choices, One Destiny
+
|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
 
|rating=4
 
|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>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Frances Wilson
 
|title=How to Survive the Titanic or the Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809222</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Frank McLynn
 
|title=The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph 1942-45
 
|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.
+
|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>0099551780</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0008294011
|author=Nathaniel Philbrick
+
|title=How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
|title=The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Big Horn
+
|author=Ece Temelkuran
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|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.
+
|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 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521245</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1788037812
|author=Robert Knapp
+
|title=The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908
|title=Invisible Romans: Prostitutes, Outlaws, Slaves, Gladiators, Ordinary Men and Women … the Romans that History Forgot
+
|author=Brian Anderson
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|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.  
+
|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>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>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1910593508
|author=John Dickie
+
|title=Apollo
|title=Blood Brotherhoods: The Rise of the Italian Mafias
+
|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins
 
|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.
+
|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>0340963921</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Alex Kershaw
 
|title=To Save a People
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539136</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Andrew Wheen
 
|title=Dot-Dash To Dot.Com
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Popular Science
 
|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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441967591</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1786331047
|author=Nigel Hamilton
+
|title=The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family
|title=American Caesars: Lives of the US Presidents, from Franklin D Roosevelt to George W Bush
+
|author=Helen Rappaport
 
|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 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 life.  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.
+
|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.
|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 understood. At 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>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Richard Holmes
 
|title=Churchill's Bunker: The Secret Headquarters at the Heart of Britain's Victory
 
|rating=4
 
|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 Parliament.  The 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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682312</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Home and Family Reviews]]
|title=Russia: A 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East
 
|author=Martin Sixsmith
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849900728</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

1908745819.jpg

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

0857058320.jpg

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

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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

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