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[[Category:New Reviews|History]]__NOTOC__ <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{Frontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=History5|genre=Travel|summary=Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?__NOTOC__}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Julius NorwichB09BLBP3P8|title=The PopesNeville Chamberlain's War: A HistoryHow Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager

|summary=Historian [[:Category:John Julius Norwich|John Julius Norwich]] (or Rt Hon/Viscount John Julius Norwich, Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to give him his full title) doesn't write misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the sort popular imagination of history books one associates with school the early days. He doesnof World War II from 1939-40, known as the 't do dry and dusty. In fact 'Phoney War'The Popes: A History'' isn't ''just'' a history . 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 but a romp through the ages with some great trivia nuggets scattered throughout , it was of vital significance in how the informative goldwar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565870</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emma Smith3756228711|title=CDC: The Cambridge Shakespeare Guide|rating=5|genre=Home and Family|summary=Does the world need another guide to Shakespearehappy years with a spectacular IT 's plays? There are plenty about and students these days have the added resource of the Internet to get the basics. However, if it does, then this is as good as any you will find. ItPhenomena's nicely written and beautifully clear and above all, succinct. In fact I'm doing a disservice to Emma Smith already by terming it a guide to his plays, because she also includes the poems and sonnets.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>052114972X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Ackroyd|title=London UnderHans Bodmer

|summary=Peter Ackroyd is already well-known as a historian ''The history of London. As a kind of adjunct to his mammoth work on the city, here we have a comparatively slender tome on one specific aspect. Underneath the city is a world development of its own, IT could fill books of springs, streams, Roman amphitheatres, Victorian sewers, gang hideouts, the creatures which have dwelt in its darkness from rats and eels to monsters and hosts, and last but not least the modern Underground railway systemseveral hundred pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287374</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Peter Ackroyd|title=London: The Concise Biography|rating=4Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that.5|genre=History|summary=As is He has chosen to tell us about the case with his recent volume on Charles Dickensshort, Ackroyd's London is an abridged version but explosive, history of the full book originally published twelve years agoControl Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. NeverthelessIt's a fascinating tale, at over 600 pages of fairly close print told in paperback, it is still a very full readmixture of technological summary and wry anecdote.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570386</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David StaffordZiggy Greene|title=Mission Accomplished: SOE Fritz and Italy 1943 - 1945Kurt|rating=3.54|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=The work 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 secret services is always going empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to be shady, dark the synagogue choir and murkyat a vocational school. Books like David Stafford Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours's Mission Accomplished: SOE each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and Italy 1943 - 1945 make an effort to shine workmanlike as a light on switch. But this is the time just before the shadows Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and bring instead of having a national vote to keep the facts into viewNazis out, invite them in with open arms. Stafford 's admirably honest introduction claims that he has 'done [his] best to ensure that what appears here is accurate and truthfulKristallnacht', but reminds his reader that 'history is indeed intrinsically messy'; even more so when his sources were writing with secrecy happened in Vienna just as much as in mind. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531836</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Paul Bushkovitch|title=A Concise History of Russia|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Russia's recent historyGermany, especially since as did all the end round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the Cold War, has been so full younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of new developments that there is probably little if any limit an evacuation to Britain or the number of fresh histories the market can absorb. This most recentUS, from a Professor of History at Yale Universitywhile Fritz and his father are, take a little over 450 pages unknown initially to tell the story from the earliest days of Kiev Ruseach other, packed off on the territory which was same train to become Buchenwald and the ancestor of stone quarry there. And us wondering how the present nation state around titular event for the 10th century AD, to Vladimir Putin's assumption adult variant of office as President in 2000.all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0521543231</amazonuk>024156574X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chil RajchmanJohn Henry Phillips|title=Treblinka: A Survivor's MemoryThe Search

|summary=Here comes yet another 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 about is a case of the Holocaustlatter, and yet another with more than enough damning indictment as our author promises to locate the topic of those events and their perpetratorsthe titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, with the target might not exist any more than enough horrific reportage to make your blood run cold– oh, and with more than enough distinguishing features to make it a necessary purchase's underwater, when he cannot dive. The latter is partly down Latching on to where it came from a particular D- while Dachau started out as a camp for political prisonersDay 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 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 he was constructed purely and simply lucky to killsurvive when it sank from beneath him. It has rightly been called The secondary aim is to erect a 'conveyer-belt executioner's block'memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849163995</amazonuk>1472146182

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Johanna AdorjanB09F4CTKJR|title=An Exclusive LoveFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer

|genre=BiographyHistorical Fiction|summary=This moving memoir tells of It's the double suicide of both István (a Hungarian-Jewish form later stages of Stephen) World War I and his wife Vera one Sunday morning in Octoberthe United States has just entered the conflict. The story Petrol Petronus is told by their granddaughter, Joanna Adorján a young American who has signed up and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with Vera, with whom joined the author shares many characteristics17 Aero Squadron. The story begins with This company was the systematic persecution of such Hungarian Jews first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Budapest under Canada, the Nazi occupation and describes their perilous flight first to be attached to Denmark after the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956. It ends with RAF and the police reports of first to be sent into the duty officer dated 15.10.91 with skies to fight the discovery of their bodies Germans in their bungalow in the Charlottenlundactive combat. But before that can happen, a town of Petrol has to master flying 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 and memorablenotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552671</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Loades0578761718|title=The Tudors: Inspiring History of a DynastySpecial Relationship|author=Nancy Carver

|summary=For several years David Loades has written and published extensively about The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the TudorsCity of London from at least 1181, individually 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 collectivelythen survived for centuries until World War II, from almost every angle possiblewhen it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. This title is not But that wasn't the end of its story: after a chronological biography or history of phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the five monarchs whose reigns gave their name church's walls were transported to the eraFulton, Missouri. As he and his publisher make clear There, in the prefacegrounds of Westminster College, it is rather the church was rebuilt and today serves as a study of Tudor policiesmemorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441136908</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Francesca Beauman1784385166|title=Shapely Ankle Preferr'dThe Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of the Lonely Hearts AdvertisementNazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse

|summary=You might What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the Lonely Hearts ad Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a trivial matter. You might think it should appear in lower case and not be capitalised, concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but youthey are emblematic of the Third Reich'd be s fascist regime in disagreement with Ms Beauman, who gives a big L all its iniquity. But some objects and a big H images from that time may be less familiar to it every time she writes of it in her survey of its historyyou. What's moreIn this short volume, she gets Roger Moorhouse has attempted to write about a lot more than just illustrate the contents period of the adverts in this brilliant bookThird Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009951334X</amazonuk> 

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roman Krznaric|title=The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to Live|rating=5|genre=History|summary='How should we live?' asks author Roman Krznaric. To answer this ancient question, he looks to history. 'I believe that the future of the art of living can be found by gazing into the past'Lun Zhang, he says. Creating a book which is as full of curiosities as a Renaissance 'Wunderkammer'Adrien Gombeaud, he has a stab at the big questions: love, belief, money, family, death. The result is a pot-pourri of delights which left this particular reader stimulated Ameziane and invigorated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683939</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James PalmerEdward Gauvin (translator)|title=The Death of MaoTiananmen 1989: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New ChinaOur Shattered Hopes

|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=Welcome to China, where I never really followed the populous are busy leaving a rural country full events of prosperous mineral resources and coal mines, and shoddily-built hydro-electric dams Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in environmentally dubious locations, for the burgeoningsecond half of their teens has other priorities, mechanised citiesyou know. But this isnI certainly didn't the birth know of 2012, it's the dawn weeks of 1976. Chairman Mao is dying, Premier Zhou Enlai has just died, protests and hunger strikes from the cauldron of power is being stirred as never students before. Among the momentous events massacre and the birth of the year however will be a huge earthquake directly centred on the city of TangshanTank Man image, which will kill something like two thirds of a million people.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571243991</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Phillip Thomas Tucker|title=Exodus From I didn't know how the Alamo|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Remember the Alamo!  The war-cry of generations of Americans is based upon the idea of the hugely outnumbered defenders of the Texan mission against the marauding Mexicans standing in defence of an ideal until death.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1612000762</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Louise Foxcroft|title=Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=We’re in that post-Christmas period when all the socialising and indulging is over and all you’re left with is area had long been 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 venue 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 tipspolitical protest, and the cover does little to dispel this idea, groaning as it is with the weight of plump jellies, lavish cupcakes and even a decadent lobster or two, but take a moment to note the subtitle, if you will: ''I didn't know more than a history of dieting over 2000 years'''.|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 of spit about the six million or so dead at the hands of the Nazis, both through death camps and death squadspeople involved on either side. We are all probably conscious that before they were taken to the forests to be shot, or to the train station, never to be seen again, the Jewish and other communities captured This book is practically flawless in the Holocaust were ransacked giving a general browser's context for everything they had. It started early, of course, with the denial whole season of rights for Jewish people to own businesses, then houses, paintings, other valuables, cash - and protests back in the end their own gold dental fillings. The story of what happened to everything is as complex as retelling the ends of six million people, but this book opens up several windows on to those stories, through the more notable examples1989.|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 Away|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Many Americans believe that the Declaration of Independence is the cornerstone of the American democracy, the fountain-head of the American Way of Life and the American Dream. The 4th of July is the national holiday and often thought to be the single most important date in American history.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>159474520X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Toby Lester|title=Da VinciThis Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Ghost: The untold story of Vitruvian Man|rating=4|genre=Knitted History|summary=As the number of popular non-fiction titles grows, the authors on the hunt for new-book material often use 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>}} {{newreview|author=Neil Monnery|title=Safe As Houses? A Historical Analysis of Property PricesEsther Rutter|rating=45

|summary=Neil Monnery It was asked December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to become a trustee of a local charity with most of its assets in local residential propertypeople she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. Over the years this had yielded good results The job frustrated her and the charity even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was concerned as going to whether or not they should continue on the same basis or diversify be a time for making changes and Monnery said she decided that he she would look into this. That discussion was travel the length and breadth of the genesis for this book as he began to research British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's history of house prices – 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 UK farm'' - and elsewhere – for as far back as he could go learned to establish whether or not house werespin, well, as safe as housesknit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907994017</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Wilson1789017977|title=Shadow of the TitanicRonnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams

|summary=Lesson one in writing non-fiction articles Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and journalism seems Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to be whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to find out what is topicalhave 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. April 2012 is For a while the centenary of the sinking of family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the Titanic, 1929 Depression and there are going five-year-old Ronnie had to be hoards of people finding it topical adjust to celebrate thata very different lifestyle. Lesson two seems One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be to find your own unique angle on the storywell-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. Wilson approaches He joined the Titanic disaster by sinking her army at the end of chapter one, for he looks more at the lives of the people on board, and how they took the calamity and dealt with iteighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847377300</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Englund1980891117|title=The Beauty and G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the Sorrow: An intimate history life of the first world warGeorge Engleheart|author=John 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 of events, an acknowledgement leading portrait miniaturists of defeat by one sideGeorgian London, and with a peace agreementcareer lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. Yet there are many different ways He was also one of telling its historythe most prolific, and as Englund tells us in his prefacepainting nearly 5, this is not a book about what it '''was''', but about what it was '''like'''000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Though a series Throughout most of snapshots in words, that time he shows us various stages carefully recorded the names of each of the conflict his clients, and its effect on people. His emphasis subsequently transcribed them into what is not so much events and processes, but more the feelings, impressions, experiences and moods of individuals caught up in the periodreferred to as his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683424</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Oppenheimer1789016304|title=MachiavelliWar and Love: A Life Beyond Ideology |rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Machiavelli, 'the first philosopher to define politics as treacheryfamily's testament of anguish, has probably been better known as an adjective, Machiavellian being a synonym for duplicity endurance and devotion 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>}} {{newreviewoccupied Amsterdam|author=Clarissa Dickson Wright|title=A History of English FoodMelanie Martin

|summary=Writing a history of English food, Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and to some extent drinkwas entranced by what she discovered, must be a daunting task, but as an experienced TV presenter (as one particularly in ''The Diary of the Ann Frank''Two Fat Ladiesbut then realised that her own family'' with s stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the late Jennifer Paterson) and as one who was born in city during the post-war rationing world in 1947, Clarissa Dickson Wright is well placed to do so.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905211856</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Art Spiegelman|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]]years, but only five thousand survived and before it was the focus of superb history books such as [[Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder|Martin could not understand how this]], it became a family saga of a father relating his experiences could be allowed to happen in a son, country with liberal values who then drew it all - featuring animals not humans - [[Maus by Art Spiegelman|Maus]]were resistant to German occupation. To celebrate Most people believed that the twenty-five years since then, we have this brilliant look occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed 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 Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate 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 the way that time)) was news to meit did, but initial protests melted away as was the raffle that was held (organisers became more or less) for being the unknown soldiercircumspect. Therefore this is It's an atrocity on a good book for children and the adults willing to instill some historical trivia into themvast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330471732</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Timothy Snyder1908745819|title=Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and StalinSurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie

|summary=The first chapter is enoughSometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. I don't mean the prefaceMostly we take them at their word, or introduction, that mean you start reading chapter one about an hour innot, but chapter one itself, detailing as rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it does turns out that we didn't like the way Stalin blatantly enforced collectivization on Ukrainebook. That's farmsa rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, thus killing off millions of local civiliansrarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The seed stock ended up being taken away as part blurb speaks of the grain quota to feed the rest author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of the Soviet Union, and hardly anybody failed to go without at some point as herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a resultbad description of where I am. The first chapter hereAdd to that my love of the natural world, then, is more than enough in telling us what we didn't know, explaining perfectly lucidly yet academically how of those aspects of the poetic and why what happened happenedlyrical that are about style not form, and at times substance most of quite gruesome anecdote and contemporary reportageall, churning our stomachs and making us have second thoughts about reading connection. Of course, this book had my name onit. 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>0099551799</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Paxman0857058320|title=Empire: What Ruling Lord Of All the World Did to the BritishDead|rating=5|genre=History|summaryauthor=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 Javier Cercas 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 TerrorAnne 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 the history of England (indeed just England, not Wales and Scotland, as the author makes clear). This takes A little while ago a very simple and very effective approach friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to the matter, come would be discussed by focusing on a hundred specific places which somehow illustrate A level history students when faced with the nationquestion 's progress from prehistoric times 'Discuss the factors which led to today, in chronological order.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848546068</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nancy Mitford|title=The Sun King|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Nancy Mitford assumes ..'' I agreed that youshe was right and wasn'll need no introduction t certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading 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 think now that I do know. We are in Whitehall, lasted through the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwelldanger of losing democracy and whilst it's Commonwealth, the reigns a flawed system I can't think of Charles Ia better one, James II, William III and into particularly as the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne. He bridged the gap between the middle ages and the early modern era'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528886</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stephen O'Shea1788037812|title=The Friar Fraternity of Carcassonnethe Estranged: Revolt Against the Inquisition The 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 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the integrity nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the Polish homelandheterosexual Havelock Ellis. Now consider Exploring the promontory margins of land around Vilnius, or Wilno as it society and studying homosexuality was then knowncommon on the European Continent, which was contained inside Poland but barely talked about in 1921. It was an area in which the small market town UK, so the publications of Hruzdowa, comprising some 52 buildings and just large enough these men were hugely significant – contributing to warrant a town hall, was situated. These wild borderlands – known as the Kresy - were fought over for centuries by Austriansscientific understanding of homosexuality, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians. It was here that Matthew Kelly's great-grandfather, who had imbibed beginning the values struggle for recognition and élan of the dashing officer class, Rafal Ryzewscy, came to teach with his clever young wifeequality, Hanna. They were deeply committed leading to progress through education and to peaceably raising their two little daughters. However, the dreadful and calamitous year milestone legalisation of 1939, was approaching when Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland same-sex relationships in the most cynical pact1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515997</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mick Conefrey1910593508|title=How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt: A Handbook for the Lady Adventurer|rating=4|genre=Travel|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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688412</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewApollo|author=David Bennett|title=A Magnificent Disaster: The Failure of the Market Garden, the Arnhem Operation, September 1944|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Operation Market GardenMatt Fitch, September 1944 is encapsulated for most people in the Hollywood movie "A Bridge Too Far" which, like most movies, gets some of it right Chris Baker 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|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>}} {{newreview|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 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=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 Nicholas and Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the women who surrounded time for various reasons, have long since been established. For the Caesars is how easily last few months of their reputations lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, their children and few remaining servants were createdheld in increasingly squalid, moulded and destroyedhumiliating captivity. Any woman who put a foot out of line To prevent them from being rescued, in a culture where men held almost July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all the power could be accused of a litany of crimes which bore curious similarities with those of many another woman shot and bayoneted to death in similar circumstances. Incest and adultery were charges regularly levied against themwhich, and once the very fact that the details were identical news was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in almost every case should give rise to suspicion about their accuracy. And yet history has accepted and spread these scandals as factEurope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523930</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Daniel Allen Butler|title=The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathia, the Californian, and the Night the Titanic Was Lost|rating=4|genre=History|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 mystery. When the wireless operator Move 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 vicinity. Captain Arthur Rostron on the ''Carpathia'' responded to the distress signal [[Newest Home 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 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 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|summary=Most of us see history rather like a cloud. We're aware of the great mass of it, seeing some parts more clearly than others, but perhaps struggling to bring it into a straight line. Some parts we will have studied at school, or read about out of interest but these parts will be balanced by other periods when we will be woefully ignorant of some of the most basic facts. I've studied the Tudors in some depth at various points in my life – but I would struggle to tell you much about the Stuarts. What was needed was a concise history of England in one volume and written for the adult reader who would simply like to be more informed, but not over-burdened.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684617</amazonuk>}}Family Reviews]]