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[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]]==History==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Eamon Duffy|title=Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition|rating=4|genre=History|summary=In the introduction to this book Eamon Duffy, Professor of the History of Christianity at Cambridge History, points out that all too often historians have written about the English Reformation from strongly polarised views. Taking two extreme examples, he cites one which states that the people of England, formerly happy medieval Catholics, were forced by King Henry to abandon their religion, and England was never merry again, alongside another which speaks of the English being oppressed by corrupt churchmen until King Henry gave them the Protestant nation for which they longed. On the following page, he suggests that it had long been an axiom of historical writing that the success of the Reformation in England was an inevitable consequence of the dysfunction and unpopularity of late medieval Catholicism. Such remarks were evidently made by writers with an axe to grind. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441181172</amazonuk!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Winter1785633457|title=Defeating HitlerCharging Around: Whitehall's Top Secret Report on Why Hitler Lost Exploring the War|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Just how and why did Hitler lose the Second World War? The message in [[Fatherland by Robert Harris]] is that he spent too much effort killing Jews to concentrate on anything else. Remarkably, this look at more explicit reasons for the end Edges of the Third Reich barely mentions the Holocaust. What we have is ''Some Weaknesses in German Strategy and Organisation 1933-1945'' - a document drawn up England by what would now have to be called Whitehall Mandarins, written during a year of war and a year of peace, that itemises for those with enough security clearance just what Hitler's chain of command was, and what his thinking was for each theatre of the War. It was never Top Secret, but was classified for thirty years and has spent about as long waiting for this hardback version.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441196358</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewElectric Car|author=Jean-Paul Kauffmann|title=A Journey to Nowhere: Among the Lands and History of CourlandClive Wilkinson|rating=4.5
|genre=Travel
|summary=When I turn to travel writing, it is Clive Wilkinson has a healthy balance history of that about places I have been to, and places I've not. But without sounding too big-headed it is seldom places I have never heard of in any context - especially those I have passed through, what's moretravelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. The 'nowhere' in focus here is Courland, which was more-or-less As he neared his eightieth birthday the coastal slither idea of exploring the top edges of Latvia, and England in an electric car was once an independent Duchynot totally outrageous. In one fell swoop Kauffmann seems to become the only travel writer to have written fact, it should be a book about the place, at least pleasant holiday for many a generationClive and his wife, andJoan, shouldn't it's pleasant to say, probably the best one could have hoped for.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050362</amazonuk>?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Penelope Hughes-HallettB09BLBP3P8|title=The Immortal DinnerNeville Chamberlain's War: A famous evening of genius and laughter in literary LondonHow Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 18171939-1940|author=Frederic Seager
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=A book based around just one dinner sounds a little extraordinaryReceived wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. But One such is the scrubbing from the host, painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, was no ordinary artist. He was a friend of many popular imagination of the major artistic and literary figures early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the day''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in addition to being an ambitious painter of historical scenessave the day. SadlyVery little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, his ambition was not matched by popularity or good fortune, and despite or perhaps parly because an exaggerated belief as Frederic Seager argues in his own abilitiesthis book, one and a half centuries after his death he is largely forgotten except for his suicide after years it was of despair, and perhaps his diary as wellvital significance in how the war played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956372X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Martin3756228711|title=Underground OvergroundCDC: A PassengerThe happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena's History of the Tube |author=Hans Bodmer|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Although he was born in Yorkshire, Andrew Martin has long been enthralled by the London Underground. His father worked on British Rail, and Andrew himself therefore had free travel on the system as well as a Privilege Pass which entitled him to free first-class train travel on the national rail network. Having lived in London for twenty-five years, commuting to various newspaper offices in his employment as a journalist, a job which has included writing a regular magazine column, Tube Talk, he is well qualified to write this entertaining and enlightening social ''The history of the worlddevelopment of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''s most famous underground railway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684773</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=R I MooreJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=The War On Heresy: Faith Fritz and Power in Medieval EuropeKurt
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=At We start with the end 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 first millenniumneighbours, Western Europe was being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a place which had barely ever encountered heresyvocational school. It took just a couple of centuries Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for it to become using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a major problem in light switch. But this is the time just before the eyes Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of church leaders, leading having a national vote to keep the persecution of individuals and groupsNazis out, invite them in with open arms. Was heresy such a fast ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-growing problem? In this volume, R I Moore provides a thoughtful analysis ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the issues younger Kurt at home with his mother and makes a powerful case that many supposed heretics were merely victims sisters anxious to hear word of a paranoid church which created propaganda 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 justify so many deathsBuchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846681960</amazonuk>024156574X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John Julius Norwich|title=The Popes: A History|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Historian [[:Category:John Julius Norwich|John Julius Norwich]] (or Rt Hon/Viscount John Julius Norwich, to give him his full title) doesn't write the sort of history books one associates with school days. He doesn't do dry and dusty. In fact ''The Popes: A History'' isn't ''just'' a history book but a romp through the ages with some great trivia nuggets scattered throughout the informative gold.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565870</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Emma SmithHenry Phillips|title=The Cambridge Shakespeare GuideSearch
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Peter Ackroyd is already well-known as 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 historian of Londonfair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. As This book is a kind case of adjunct the latter, as our author promises to his mammoth work on locate the topic of the city, here we have a comparatively slender tome on one specific aspecttitular search. Underneath And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the city search area is a world of its ownwide one, of springsthe target might not exist any more – oh, streamsand it's underwater, Roman amphitheatreswhen he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, Victorian sewersour author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, gang hideouts, the creatures which have dwelt in its darkness and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from rats and eels beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to monsters and hostseveryone else aboard, and last but not least the modern Underground railway systemvast majority of whom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099287374</amazonuk>1472146182
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter AckroydB09F4CTKJR|title=London: The Concise BiographyFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryHistorical Fiction|summary=As is the case with his recent volume on Charles Dickens, AckroydIt's London the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is an abridged version of a young American who has signed up and joined the full book originally published twelve years ago17 Aero Squadron. NeverthelessThis company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, at over 600 pages of fairly close print the first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in paperbackactive combat. But before that can happen, it is still a very full readPetrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570386</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Stafford0578761718|title=Mission Accomplished: SOE and Italy 1943 - 1945|rating=3.5|genre=The Inspiring History|summary=The work of the secret services is always going to 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 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', but reminds his reader that 'history is indeed intrinsically messy'; even more so when his sources were writing with secrecy in mind. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531836</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSpecial Relationship|author=Paul Bushkovitch|title=A Concise History of RussiaNancy Carver
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Russia's recent historyThe church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, especially since the original church was destroyed in the end Great Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the Cold fire and then survived for centuries until World WarII, has been so full of new developments when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that there is probably little if any limit to wasn't the number end of fresh histories the market can absorb. This most recent, from its story: after a Professor of History at Yale Universityphenomenal fundraising effort, take a little over 450 pages to tell the story stones from the earliest days church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in the grounds of Kiev RusWestminster College, the territory which church was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to become the ancestor of the present nation state around the 10th century AD, to Vladimir Putin's assumption of office as President in 2000Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521543231</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chil Rajchman1784385166|title=TreblinkaThe Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Survivor's MemoryMaterial History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Here What is the first image that comes yet another book about to mind when you think of the Holocaust, and yet another with more than enough damning indictment 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 purchase. Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The latter is partly down gate to where it came from - while Dachau started out as a concentration camp for political prisoners, ? 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 Auschwitz I was a work camp based round barrack blocks images from that time may be less familiar to you can squint at and see a bad private school, . In this is coming from Treblinkashort volume, which was constructed purely and simply Roger Moorhouse has attempted to kill. It has rightly been called a 'conveyer-belt executioner's block'illustrate the period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849163995</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Johanna AdorjanLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=An Exclusive LoveTiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|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.
|isbn=1684056993
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0648684806
|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist
|author=John Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=This moving memoir tells The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the double suicide of both István (a Hungariantime she was just three-years-Jewish form old but because of Stephen) some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and his wife Vera one Sunday morning in Octoberthree brothers. The story is told by their granddaughter Instead, she remained with her grandparents, Joanna Adorján who doted on her and tells of her close fondness for them saw that she received a good education, both but in particular with Vera, with whom the author shares many characteristicsand out of school. The story begins with She was the systematic persecution of such Hungarian Jews only child in Budapest under the Nazi occupation household and describes their perilous flight to Denmark after the Soviet occupation of Hungary her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in 1956. It ends with the police reports mid-west of the duty officer dated 15.10.91 with the discovery of their bodies in their bungalow in the CharlottenlundUnited States and life was hard, a town of as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the Capital Region of Denmarkfamily. Entry is gained by Clara would only know her mother for a local locksmith who charged 297few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived.02 kroner. It is As the charm and lyricism with which this tale is related which makes this fatefuleldest girl, haunting a heavy burden would fall on Clara and profoundly moving story about identity both sad and memorableWisconsin was a rude awakening. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552671</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Loades1783784350|title=The TudorsThis Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History of a Dynasty|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=For several years David Loades has written and published extensively about the Tudors, individually and collectively, from almost every angle possible. This title is not a chronological biography or history of the five monarchs whose reigns gave their name to the era. As he and his publisher make clear in the preface, it is rather a study of Tudor policies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441136908</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Francesca Beauman|title=Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts AdvertisementEsther Rutter
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=You might think the Lonely Hearts ad a trivial matterIt was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. You might think it should appear in lower case The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be capitalised, but you'd be in disagreement with Ms Beauman, who gives a big L time for making changes and a big H to it every time she writes decided that she would travel the length and breadth of it in her survey the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of its wool's historyand how it had made and changed the landscape. WhatShe'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - ''s more, she gets to write about a lot more than just free-range child on the contents of the adverts farm'' - and learned to spin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in this brilliant bookher blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009951334X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roman Krznaric1789017977|title=The WonderboxRonnie and Hilda's Romance: Curious Histories of How to LiveTowards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating=54
|genre=History
|summary=Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There'How should we live?s some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry' asks author Roman Krznaric. To answer this ancient question, s birthdate: he looks claimed to history. 'I believe that the future of the art of living can be found by gazing into the past'have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he saysmight well have shaved a few years off his age. Creating a book which is as full of curiosities as For a Renaissance 'Wunderkammer', he has a stab at while the big questions: love, belief, money, family, deathwas quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. The result is a pot One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-pourri of delights which left out and this particular reader stimulated and invigoratedwould stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683939</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Palmer1980891117|title=The Death of MaoG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: The Tangshan Earthquake and A year in the Birth life of the New ChinaGeorge Engleheart|author=John Webley
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryArt|summary=Welcome to China, where George Engleheart was one of the populous are busy leaving a rural country full leading portrait miniaturists of prosperous mineral resources and coal minesGeorgian London, and shoddily-built hydro-electric dams in environmentally dubious locations, for with a career lasting from the 1770s to the burgeoning, mechanised citiesRegency era. But this isn't the birth He was also one of 2012, it's the dawn of 1976. Chairman Mao is dyingmost prolific, Premier Zhou Enlai has just diedpainting nearly 5, and the cauldron 000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of power is them being stirred as never beforeof King George III). Among Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the momentous events names of the year however will be a huge earthquake directly centred on the city each of Tangshanhis clients, which will kill something like two thirds of a million peopleand subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571243991</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Phillip Thomas Tucker1789016304|title=Exodus From the AlamoWar and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=Remember 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 Alamo! The war-cry of generations of Americans is based upon 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 idea of occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the hugely outnumbered defenders of Germans might reach the Texan mission against city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the marauding Mexicans standing Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in defence 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 an ideal until deathtens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1612000762</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louise Foxcroft1908745819|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 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 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: '''a history of dieting over 2000 years'''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684250</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSurfacing|author=Kenneth D Alford and Theodore P Savas|title=Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold Kathleen Jamie|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=We are all doubtless aware of the six million 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 dead at unless it turns out that we didn't like the hands of the Nazis, both through death camps and death squadsbook. That's a rare experience. We People who are all probably conscious that before they were taken sensitive to the forests to be shothearing a book calling your name, or to the train stationrarely get it wrong. In this case, never to be seen again, the Jewish and other communities captured in the Holocaust were ransacked for everything they hadI was told why. It started early, The blurb speaks of coursethe author considering ''an older, with the denial less tethered sense of rights for Jewish people to own businesses, then houses, paintings, other valuables, cash - and in the end their own gold dental fillingsherself. '' The story Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of what happened where I am. Add to everything is as complex as retelling that my love of the ends natural world, of those aspects of six million peoplethe poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, but this book opens up several windows had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to those stories, through the more notable exampleshave it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149350</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Bradford0857058320|title=Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our Times|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=As a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies of the Queen (published in 1996), of her father George VI, and her daughter-in-law Diana, Sarah Bradford needs little introduction. At around 260 pages of text, this is barely half the length of her other titles, and probably aimed more at the general reader with an eye on Lord Of All the Diamond Jubilee market.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>067091911X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDead|author=Denise Kiernan|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 Javier Cercas 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 Vinci's Ghost: The untold story of Vitruvian ManAnne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=As ''Lord Of All the number of popular non-fiction titles grows, the authors on Dead'' is a journey to uncover the hunt for new-book material often use a author's lost ancestor'concepts life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' approachgreat uncle, trying to come up with an USP 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 a new titlethis dictator. This uniqueness The question at the centre of this book is whether it is often achieved by adopting an obscure subject, or an unusual perspective from which possible for his great uncle to view be a popular themehero whilst having fought for the wrong side. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684544</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neil Monnery0008294011|title=Safe As Houses? A Historical Analysis of Property Prices|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Neil Monnery was asked How to become Lose a trustee of a local charity with most of its assets in local residential property. Over the years this had yielded good results and the charity was concerned as to whether or not they should continue on the same basis or diversify and Monnery said that he would look into this. That discussion was the genesis for this book as he began Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to research the history of house prices – in the UK and elsewhere – for as far back as he could go to establish whether or not house were, well, as safe as houses.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907994017</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDictatorship|author=Andrew Wilson|title=Shadow of the Titanic|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Lesson one 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 of the people on board, and how they took the calamity and dealt with it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847377300</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Englund|title=The Beauty and the Sorrow: An intimate history of the first world warEce Temelkuran
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=In simple terms the First World War, like most (A little while ago a friend asked me if not all) conflicts has I thought that we were living through what in years to come down to us largely as a four-year sequence of events, an acknowledgement of defeat would be discussed by one side, and a peace agreement. Yet there are many different ways of telling its A level history, and as Englund tells us in his preface, this is not a book about what it students when faced with the question ''Discuss the factors which led to...'' I agreed that she wasright and wasn''', but about what t certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this'like'''was leading to. I think now that I do know. Though a series of snapshots We are in words, he shows us various stages danger of the conflict losing democracy 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, whilst it'the first philosopher to define politics as treacherys a flawed system I can', has probably been t think of a better known as an adjectiveone, Machiavellian being a synonym for duplicity in statecraft, than particularly as a historical person. Interestingly, the term 'Machiavelbenevolent dictator' became common in English usage is 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|genre=History|summary=Writing a history of English food, and to some extent drink, must be a daunting task, but as an experienced TV presenter (rare as one of the hen''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 sos teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905211856</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Art Spiegelman1788037812|title=MetaMAUS|rating=5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Before The Fraternity of the Holocaust was turned into [[Estranged: The Boy Fight for Homosexual Rights in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne|a child-like near-fable for all]]England, 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 twenty1891-five years since then, we have this brilliant look back at the creation of an equally brilliant volume.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916838</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1908|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 StalinBrian Anderson
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=The first chapter is enough. I don't mean Originally passed in 1885, the preface, or introduction, law that mean you start reading chapter one about an hour had made homosexual relations a crime remained inplace for 82 years. But during this time, but chapter one itselfrestrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, detailing as it does three books on the way Stalin blatantly enforced collectivization on Ukraine's farms, thus killing off millions nature of local civilianshomosexuality appeared. The seed stock ended up being taken away They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as part of the grain quota to feed heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the rest margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the Soviet UnionEuropean Continent, and hardly anybody failed to go without at some point as a result. The first chapter here, then, is more than enough but barely talked about in telling us what we didn't knowthe UK, explaining perfectly lucidly yet academically how and why what happened happenedso the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and at times of quite gruesome anecdote beginning the struggle for recognition and contemporary reportageequality, churning our stomachs and making us have second thoughts about reading onleading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551799</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Paxman1910593508|title=Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the BritishApollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=In This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the 21st century, Moon landings and the passion for the British Empire may be an anachronismsubject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, something for which hand-wringing politicians Chris Baker and church leaders may be ever ready to apologiseMike Collins. Many of us have grown up just as the last imperial remnants were crumbling away. Yet its legacy This is everywhere, a story we know well and for better or worse will always be part of the very fabric because of Britain. As Jeremy Paxman demonstrates in this excellent overview, published as the authors take a curtain-raiser few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to his series on the subject, it is never very far away from usbook. After If you've ever read a period comic book adaptation of trying to distance ourselves from it, we seem to a film you will be on the verge of coming to terms familiar with the simple truth slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that it was not so bad as it dialogue has sometimes been paintedtrimmed. Moreover, it should be remembered This is a graphic novel that even if Britain emerged from the Second World War battered could easily have been three times as long and broke, it still possessed sufficient imperial presence to become one of the Permanent Five on the United Nations Security Councilfelt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919578</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sam Willis1786331047|title=The Glorious First of JuneRace to Save the Romanovs: Fleet Battle in The Truth Behind the Reign of TerrorSecret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=To be frankThe basic facts about the deaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, I was not expecting a lot from this account some of a famous maritime battle. Marine warfare histories can be rather dullwhich were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, 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 uslong since been established. But I was gripped from the first page to For the last by this really insightful account not just few months of their lives in Russia the battle but of the whole political former Tsar 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|genre=History|summary=There are many different ways of telling the history of England (indeed just EnglandTsarina, not Wales their children and Scotlandfew remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, as the author makes clear)humiliating captivity. 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 To prevent them from prehistoric times to todaybeing rescued, in chronological order.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848546068</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nancy Mitford|title=The Sun King|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Nancy Mitford assumes that you'll need no introduction to Louis XIV, who ascended July 1918 the throne when he was four years old revolutionary regime had them all shot and reigned for well over seventy two years. To put him bayoneted to death in context his reign began before Charles I was executed in Whitehallcircumstances which, lasted through once the English Civil Warnews was confirmed beyond all doubt, 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 erahorrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528886</amazonuk>
}}