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[[Category:New Reviews|History]]==History==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Stafford1785633457|title=Mission AccomplishedCharging Around: SOE and Italy 1943 - 1945Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=3.5|genre=HistoryTravel|summary=The work 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 secret services is always going to edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be shady, dark and murky. Books like David Stafford's Mission Accomplished: SOE and Italy 1943 - 1945 make an effort to shine a light on the shadows pleasant holiday for Clive and bring the facts into view. Stafford's admirably honest introduction claims that he has 'done [his] best to ensure that what appears here is accurate and truthful'wife, Joan, but reminds his reader that shouldn'history is indeed intrinsically messy'; even more so when his sources were writing with secrecy in mind. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531836</amazonuk>t it?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul BushkovitchB09BLBP3P8|title=A Concise History of RussiaNeville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager

|summary=Russia's recent Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history, especially since . One such is the scrubbing from the end popular imagination of the Cold early days of World WarII from 1939-40, has been so full of new developments that there is probably little if any limit to known as the number of fresh histories the market can absorb''Phoney War''. This most recentWe remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, from a Professor of History at Yale Universitywar breaking out, take a little over 450 pages and Churchill coming in to tell save the story from the earliest days of Kiev Rusday. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, the territory which it was to become the ancestor of vital significance in how the present nation state around the 10th century AD, to Vladimir Putin's assumption of office as President in 2000war played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521543231</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chil Rajchman3756228711|title=TreblinkaCDC: A SurvivorThe happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena's Memory|author=Hans Bodmer|rating=54

|summary=Here comes yet another book about ''The history of the Holocaust, and yet another with more than enough damning indictment development of those events and their perpetrators, with more than enough horrific reportage to make your blood run cold, and with more than enough distinguishing features to make it a necessary purchaseIT could fill books of several hundred pages. The latter is partly down to where it came from - while Dachau started out as a camp for political prisoners, and Auschwitz I was a work camp based round barrack blocks that you can squint at and see a bad private school, this is coming from Treblinka, which was constructed purely and simply to kill. It has rightly been called a 'conveyer-belt executioner's block'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849163995</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Johanna Adorjan|title=An Exclusive Love|rating=4Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that.5|genre=Biography|summary=This moving memoir tells of He has chosen to tell us about the double suicide of both István (a Hungarian-Jewish form of Stephen) and his wife Vera one Sunday morning in October. The story is told by their granddaughtershort, Joanna Adorján and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with Veraexplosive, with whom the author shares many characteristics. The story begins with the systematic persecution history of such Hungarian Jews in Budapest under the Nazi occupation and describes their perilous flight to Denmark after the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It ends with the police reports of the duty officer dated 15.10.91 with the discovery of their bodies in their bungalow 's a fascinating tale, told in the Charlottenlund, a town mixture of the Capital Region of Denmark. Entry is gained by a local locksmith who charged 297.02 kroner. It is the charm and lyricism with which this tale is related which makes this fateful, haunting and profoundly moving story about identity both sad technological summary and memorablewry anecdote. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552671</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David LoadesZiggy Greene|title=The Tudors: History of a DynastyFritz and Kurt|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=For several years David Loades 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 written 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 published extensively about workmanlike as a light switch. But this is the time just before the TudorsAustrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, individually and collectivelyinstead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, from almost every angle possibleinvite them in with open arms. This title is not a chronological biography ''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 history of the five monarchs whose reigns gave their name US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the erastone quarry there. As he and his publisher make clear in And us wondering how the titular event for the preface, it is rather a study adult variant of Tudor policies.all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1441136908</amazonuk>024156574X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francesca BeaumanJohn Henry Phillips|title=Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts AdvertisementThe Search

|summary=You might think the Lonely Hearts ad a trivial matter. You might think it should appear in lower case and not Archaeology cannot be capitalisedchild's play, but when you'd be re scraping in disagreement with Ms Beaumanthe dirt looking to find what you can find, who gives often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a big L and fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a big H case of the latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it every time she writes of easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it in her survey of its history's underwater, when he cannot dive. WhatLatching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's morevisit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, she gets and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to write about erect a lot more than just memorial to everyone else aboard, the contents vast majority of the adverts whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in this brilliant book.their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009951334X</amazonuk>1472146182

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roman KrznaricB09F4CTKJR|title=The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to LiveFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryHistorical Fiction|summary=It'How should we live?' asks author Roman Krznarics 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. To answer this ancient questionThis company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, he looks the first to be attached to history. 'I believe that the future of RAF and the art of living can first to be found by gazing sent into the past', he saysskies to fight the Germans in active combat. Creating a book which is as full of curiosities as a Renaissance 'Wunderkammer'But before that can happen, he Petrol has a stab at to master flying the big questions: love, belief, money, family, death. The result is a pot-pourri of delights which left this particular reader stimulated and invigoratednotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683939</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Palmer0578761718|title=The Death Inspiring History of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New Chinaa Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver

|summary=Welcome to China, where The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the populous are busy leaving a rural country full City of prosperous mineral resources and coal minesLondon from at least 1181, and shoddily-built hydro-electric dams when it was first mentioned in environmentally dubious locationsrecords. 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 burgeoning, mechanised citiesBlitz. But this isnthat wasn't the birth end of 2012its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, itthe stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in the dawn grounds of 1976. Chairman Mao is dying, Premier Zhou Enlai has just diedWestminster College, the church was rebuilt and the cauldron of power is being stirred today serves as never before. Among the momentous events of the year however will be a huge earthquake directly centred on the city of Tangshan, which will kill something like two thirds of a million peoplememorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571243991</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Phillip Thomas Tucker1784385166|title=Exodus From the AlamoThe Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse|rating=3.5

|summary=Remember What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the Alamo!  Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The war-cry gate to a concentration camp? None of generations these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of Americans is based upon the idea of 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 hugely outnumbered defenders period of the Texan mission against the marauding Mexicans standing in defence Third Reich through one hundred of an ideal until deathits material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1612000762</amazonuk> 

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Louise FoxcroftLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=Calories and CorsetsTiananmen 1989: A history of dieting over two thousand yearsOur Shattered Hopes

|genre=Politics and SocietyGraphic Novels|summary=We’re in that post-Christmas period when all I never really followed the socialising and indulging is over and all you’re left events of Tiananmen Square with is a pasty, bloated, over-fed but under-nourished complexion, a wardrobe full of clothes just a little too tight and a new year’s resolution to Get Healthy. So it’s the perfect time for a new diet book to hit the shelves. The title of this one might make you think it’s going to be full of useful tips, and the cover does little to dispel this idea, groaning as much attention when it is with was playing out – someone in the weight second half of plump jellies, lavish cupcakes and even a decadent lobster or two, but take a moment to note the subtitletheir teens has other priorities, if you will: '''a history of dieting over 2000 years''know. I certainly didn'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684250</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kenneth D Alford and Theodore P Savas|title=Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold |rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=We are all doubtless aware t know of the six million or so dead at the hands weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the Nazis, both through death camps and death squads. We are all probably conscious that students before they were taken to the forests to be shot, or to the train station, never to be seen again, the Jewish massacre and other communities captured in the Holocaust were ransacked for everything they had. It started early, birth of coursethe Tank Man image, with I didn't know how the denial of rights area had long been a venue for Jewish people to own businesses, then houses, paintings, other valuablespolitical protest, cash - and in I didn't know more than a spit about the end their own gold dental fillingspeople involved on either side. The story of what happened to everything This book is as complex as retelling practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the ends whole season of six million people, but this book opens up several windows on to those stories, through the more notable examplesprotests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1935149350</amazonuk>1684056993

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Bradford0648684806|title=Queen Elizabeth IIClara Colby: Her Life in Our TimesThe International Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|summary=As 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 biographer who has previously written substantial biographies good education, both in and out of school. She was the Queen (published only child in 1996), of the household and her father George VIchildhood was glorious. By contrast, and her daughter-family had become pioneer farmers inthe mid-law Dianawest of the United States and life was hard, Sarah Bradford needs little introductionas Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. At around 260 pages of textClara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, this is barely half the length of her other titleshad ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and probably aimed more at died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the general reader with an eye eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on the Diamond Jubilee marketClara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>067091911X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Denise Kiernan1783784350|title=Signing Their Rights AwayThis Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter|rating=45

|summary=Many Americans believe 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 Declaration of Independence is the cornerstone length and breadth of the American democracyBritish Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the fountain-head of the American Way story of Life wool's history and how it had made and changed the American Dreamlandscape. The 4th of July is She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the national holiday farm'' - and often thought learned to be the single most important date spin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in American historyher blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>159474520X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Toby Lester1789017977|title=Da VinciRonnie and Hilda's GhostRomance: The untold story of Vitruvian Man|rating=4|genre=History|summary=As the number of popular non-fiction titles grows, the authors on the hunt for new-book material often use Towards a ''concept'' approach, trying to come up with an USP for a new title. This uniqueness is often achieved by adopting an obscure subject, or an unusual perspective from which to view a popular theme. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684544</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewNew Life after World War II|author=Neil Monnery|title=Safe As Houses? A Historical Analysis of Property PricesWendy Williams

|summary=Neil Monnery Ronnie Williams was asked to become a trustee the son of a local charity with most of its assets in local residential propertyThomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. Over the years this had yielded good results and the charity was concerned There's some doubt as to whether or not they should continue on the same basis were ever married or diversify even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and Monnery said that he would look into thismight well have shaved a few years off his age. That discussion For a while the family was the genesis for this book as he began quite well-to research the history of house prices – -do but disaster struck in the UK 1929 Depression and elsewhere – for as far back as five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he could go did inherit from his father was his need to establish whether or not house were, be well, as safe as houses-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907994017</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Wilson1980891117|title=Shadow of the Titanic|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Lesson one G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in writing non-fiction articles and journalism seems to be to find out what is topical. April 2012 is the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, and there are going to be hoards of people finding it topical to celebrate that. Lesson two seems to be to find your own unique angle on the story. Wilson approaches the Titanic disaster by sinking her at the end of chapter one, for he looks more at the lives life of the people on board, and how they took the calamity and dealt with it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847377300</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGeorge Engleheart|author=Peter Englund|title=The Beauty and the Sorrow: An intimate history of the first world warJohn Webley

|genre=HistoryArt|summary=In simple terms George Engleheart was one of the First World War, like most (if not all) conflicts has come down to us largely as a four-year sequence leading portrait miniaturists of eventsGeorgian London, an acknowledgement of defeat by one side, and with a peace agreementcareer lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. 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 '''He was''', but about what it was '''like'''. Though a series of snapshots in words, he shows us various stages also one of the conflict and its effect on people. His emphasis is not so much events and processesmost prolific, but more the feelingspainting nearly 5, impressions, experiences and moods 000 miniatures altogether (over twenty 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 them being a synonym for duplicity in statecraft, than as a historical personof King George III). Interestingly, the term 'Machiavel' became common in English usage as an adjective and noun around 1570, although none Throughout most of his works were translated into that time he carefully recorded the language for another seventy years or so after that.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847252214</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Clarissa Dickson Wright|title=A History names of English Food|rating=5|genre=History|summary=Writing a history each of English foodhis clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred 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 sohis fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905211856</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Art Spiegelman1789016304|title=MetaMAUS|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]], War and before it was the focus of superb history books such as [[BloodlandsLove: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder|this]], it became a 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 testament of Kingsanguish, Queens, Emperors endurance 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 devotion 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>}} {{newreviewoccupied Amsterdam|author=Timothy Snyder|title=Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and StalinMelanie Martin

|summary=The first chapter is enough. I don't mean the preface, or introduction, that mean you start reading chapter one Melanie Martin read about an hour what happened to Dutch Jews inoccupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but chapter one itself, detailing as it does the way Stalin blatantly enforced collectivization on Ukrainethen realised that her own family's farms, thus killing off millions of local civiliansstories were equally fascinating. The seed stock ended up being taken away as part of the grain quota to feed A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the rest of city during the Soviet Unionwar years, but only five thousand survived and hardly anybody failed Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to go without at some point as happen in a resultcountry with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. The first chapter hereMost 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, thenthat the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, is but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more than enough in telling us what we didncircumspect. It't know, explaining perfectly lucidly yet academically how and why what happened happened, and at times s an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of quite gruesome anecdote and contemporary reportage, churning our stomachs and making us have second thoughts about reading onindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551799</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Paxman1908745819|title=Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the BritishSurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie

|summary=In Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the 21st centurybook. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, the British Empire may be an anachronismrarely get it wrong. In this case, something for which hand-wringing politicians and church leaders may be ever ready to apologiseI was told why. Many The blurb speaks of us have grown up just as the last imperial remnants were crumbling awayauthor considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself. '' Yet its legacy is everywhere, and for better or worse will always be part of the very fabric Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of Britainwhere I am. As Jeremy Paxman demonstrates in this excellent overview, published as a curtain-raiser Add to his series on that my love of the subjectnatural world, 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 those aspects of coming to terms with the simple truth poetic and lyrical that it was are about style not so bad as it has sometimes been painted. Moreoverform, it should be remembered that even if Britain emerged from the Second World War battered and brokesubstance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it still possessed sufficient imperial presence . It was written for me. It would have found its way to become one of the Permanent Five on the United Nations Security Councilme eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919578</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sam Willis0857058320|title=The Glorious First of June: Fleet Battle in Lord Of All the Reign of TerrorDead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)|rating=54

|summary=To be frank, I was not expecting ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a lot from this account of a famous maritime battlejourney to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. 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 warshipCercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's anatomy, but quite deathly for death in the rest of usSpanish Civil War. But I was gripped from Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the first page to figure who looms large over the last by book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this really insightful account not just of dictator. The question at the battle but centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the whole political and historical events which inspired itwrong side. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849160384</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Julius Norwich0008294011|title=A History of England in 100 PlacesHow to Lose a Country: From Stonehenge The 7 Steps from Democracy to the GherkinDictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran

|summary=There are many different ways of telling 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 history of England (indeed just England, not Wales and Scotland, as question ''Discuss the author makes clear)factors which led to. ..'' This takes I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a very simple 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 very effective approach to the matterwhilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, by focusing on a hundred specific places which somehow illustrate particularly as the nation'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's progress from prehistoric times to today, in chronological orderteeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848546068</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nancy Mitford1788037812|title=The Sun King|rating=4|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 Fraternity of the reign of Queen Anne. He bridged the gap between the middle ages and the early modern era.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528886</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stephen O'Shea|title=Estranged: The Friar of Carcassonne: Revolt Against the Inquisition Fight for Homosexual Rights in the Last Days of the Cathars|rating=4|genre=History|summary=It starts with a painting. The painting isn't the point: the subject is. In 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 Carcassonne. Although O'Shea veers clear of telling us the outcome of the trialEngland, one cannot help feeling that it wasn't an acquittal. Such things tended not to go down in history quite so resoundingly. Not in those days.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668319X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1891-1908|author=Matthew Kelly|title=Finding PolandBrian Anderson

|summary=Looking at any historical map of Poland anyone may see how its borders have changed over the centuries. Where will you find Originally passed in 1885, the Polish home? One answer must be law that it is founded deep had made homosexual relations a crime remained in the hearts of the Polish people who fought place for the liberty and the integrity of the Polish homeland82 years. Now consider the promontory of land around VilniusBut during this time, or Wilno as it was then known, which was contained inside Poland in 1921restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. It was an area in which the small market town of Hruzdowa, comprising some 52 buildings Between 1891 and just large enough to warrant a town hall1908, was situated. These wild borderlands – known as three books on 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 nature of the dashing officer class, Rafal Ryzewscy, came to teach with his clever young wife, Hannahomosexuality appeared. They were deeply committed to progress through education and to peaceably raising their written by two little daughters. However, the dreadful homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and calamitous year of 1939John Addington Symonds, was approaching when Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland in as well as the most cynical pactheterosexual Havelock Ellis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515997</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mick Conefrey|title=How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt: A Handbook for Exploring the Lady Adventurer|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=Scott, Amundsen, Bleriot, Stanley and Livingstone, John Glenn, et all - any child should be drummed out margins of school if they can't name half a dozen explorers, travel pioneers society 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 studying homosexuality was common on the guys have been quickly followed by the galsEuropean Continent, there is just too much ground to be made up but barely talked about in recognising what the fairer sex have done in UK, so the world publications of, well, going round our world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688412</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Bennett|title=A Magnificent Disaster: The Failure these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of the Market Gardenhomosexuality, and beginning the Arnhem Operation, September 1944|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Operation Market Garden, September 1944 is encapsulated struggle for most people in the Hollywood movie "A Bridge Too Far" which, like most movies, gets some of it right recognition 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 disasterequality, perhaps consciously echoing that judgement on leading to the charge milestone legalisation of the Light Brigade same-sex relationships in a far earlier conflict "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre"?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>193514989X</amazonuk>1967.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lynn Peril1910593508|title=Swimming in the Steno Pool: A Retro Guide to Making It in the Office|rating=4.5|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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393338541</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewApollo|author=Niall McCrae|title=The Moon and Madness|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 courseMatt Fitch, the very word 'lunatic' has its origins in the moon. McCrae tries to separate myth Chris Baker and fact in this fascinating book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402146</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nigel Jones|title=TowerMike Collins

|summary=If you had This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to name one particular artefact which personifies the history 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 Englandthis, it would 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 hard to choose anything more appropriate than familiar with the building which slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has at various times been trimmed. This is a castle, a palace, a prison, a torture chamber, and execution site, an armoury, graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and is now the most visited tourist attraction in the nationstill felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091936659</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Annelise Freisenbruch1786331047|title=The First Ladies of RomeRace to Save the Romanovs: The Women Truth Behind the CaesarsSecret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport

|summary=Perhaps The basic facts about the most shocking thing to be gleaned from this fascinating history deaths of the women who surrounded the Caesars is how easily their reputations were createdNicholas and Alexandra, 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 some 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 deliberately obscured at 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523930</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Daniel Allen Butler|title=The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathiatime for various reasons, the Californian, and the Night the Titanic Was Lost|rating=4|genre=History|summary=It's now almost a century have long since been established. For the loss last few months of their lives in Russia the ''Titanic'' former Tsar and although much has been written about almost every aspect of that dreadful night one point has remained a mystery. When the wireless operator on the 'unsinkable' Titanic radioed that the ship had hit an icebergTsarina, had too their children and few lifeboats for all passengers and was sinking fast there remaining servants were two ships held in the vicinityincreasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. Captain Arthur Rostron on the ''Carpathia'' responded to the distress signal and hastened to the Titanic's aid. But Captain Stanley Lord of the ''Californian'' did not respond. The ship's radio officer had retired for the night and Lord failed to take decisive action later that night when told about distress flares To prevent them from the Titanic. The controversy as to why the two captains should have acted so differently has raged across the intervening years.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149857</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=D R Thorpe|title=Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=The great-grandson of a crofter, and son-in-law of a Dukebeing rescued, Harold Macmillan was born in London in 1894. Despite July 1918 the well-revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to-do aristocratic background, his years as a young adult were marked by bad experiences death in the trenches circumstances which left him with lifelong war wounds, and his early service as a Conservative Member of Parliament by once the plight of the unemployed in his first constituency of Stockton. He had much news was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives 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 steadfastlyEurope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844135411</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Simon Jenkins|title=A Short History of England |rating=4|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 Move on 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 [[Newest Home and written for the adult reader who would simply like to be more informed, but not over-burdened.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684617</amazonuk>}}Family Reviews]]