132,588
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchno edit summary
[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]]==History==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Sarah Herman|title=The Classic Guide to Famous Assassinations (Classic Guides)|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=If you ever wanted to know the details of famous assassinations, this is almost certainly the book you've been waiting for. In an easy to read style with lots of bullet points and box<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-outs, Sarah Herman talks us through history's most famous killings and failed attempts. Starting with Greek and Roman times, subsequent chapters move through religious and royal victims, revolutionaries, Russians and American politicians.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780950144</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Carola Hicks|title=Girl in a Green Gown: The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Portrait|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=The Arnolfini marriage portrait, as it is generally if perhaps inaccurately known, painted by Flemish artist Jan van Eyck, signed and dated 1434, has long been one of the most popular and enigmatic paintings of its time. Of modest size, a little less than three feet high, it is one of the oldest surviving panel pictures to be painted in oils rather than tempera. It is also regarded as the first work of art which simultaneously celebrates both middle-class comfort and monogamous marriage.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526891</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tracy Borman1785633457|title=MatildaCharging Around: Wife of Exploring the Conqueror, first Queen Edges of England|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Writing the biography of any woman who lived as long ago as the eleventh century, even someone as illustrious as a Queen, is a pretty thankless task. There will always be huge gaps in the knowledge available. For example we do not know when Matilda was born, and likewise we do not have a precise date for her marriage, although we do know when she died. No lifelike images of her are known, though evidence suggests that she was quite short of stature. In a male-dominated society, there are approximate records of when her sons were born, but not her daughters. Even more confusingly perhaps, many of the stories passed down to us throughout history are quite probably false. It is hardly surprising that this appears to be the first full-length life of her yet to appear in English.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549131</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewby Electric Car|author=Robert Shepherd|title=Westminster: A biography, from earliest times to the presentClive Wilkinson
|rating=5
|genre=HistoryTravel|summary=There seems to be no shortage of ways in which the Clive Wilkinson has a history of London can be told, and as befitting an experienced historical and political biographer, Shepherd has found another interesting variation on the themetravelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. In this superbly detailed and exhaustively researched volume, As he brings us neared his eightieth birthday the story idea of Westminster, exploring the royal capital that became the birthplace edges of parliamentary government and the centre of a world power. Over 1500 years ago it England in an electric car was Thorney Island, a secluded area on the banks of the Thamesnot totally outrageous. It then became a villageIn fact, yet it should be a very grand one comprising a spiritual centre, a royal ceremonial stage pleasant holiday for Clive and later a political capitalhis wife, encompassing buildings such as the AbbeyJoan, the Houses of Parliament, and 10 Downing Street. Against this stage has been enacted the history of a nation, of the monarchs and politicians who for better and worse shaped the events of the last thousand years.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0826423809</amazonuk>shouldn't it?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ann WroeB09BLBP3P8|title=OrpheusNeville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, The Song Of Life1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Orpheus Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is one of the most memorable and recognisable figures scrubbing from the popular imagination of Greek mythology. He was a legendary musician and poet, whose song could charm all living things and indeed the very stones early days of the earth. He had a dramatic lifeWorld War II from 1939-40, including joining the Argonauts known as they searched for the golden fleece''Phoney War''. Most memorablyWe remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, he travelled to Hades to rescue his dead wife Eurydice from the underworld. Howeverwar breaking out, he was unable to obey Pluto’s command not to look at her. He couldn’t resist turning around, only and Churchill coming in to see her sucked back into save the depths and deathday. This tale of romantic tragedy and thwarted love has intrigued Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and delighted artists and writers through the centuriesyet, and they have portrayed Orpheus and his life as Frederic Seager argues in musicthis book, paintings, plays, poems, operas and films ever sinceit was of vital significance in how the war played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951689</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alison Maloney3756228711|title=Bright Young ThingsCDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans Bodmer
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=According to the summary I read of ''Bright Young Things'' before choosing the book to read, it 'takes a sweeping look at the changing world The history of the Jazz Age'. I was expecting it to be something of a narrative account development of the Roaring Twenties – in actual fact, it's set out as a collection IT could fill books of trivia about the decadeseveral hundred pages. Similarly, the 'first person accounts' mentioned on the inside front cover are limited to two or three sentence quotes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753540975</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gordon WeissJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=The CageFritz and Kurt
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=The history We start with the pair of Ceylonbrothers Fritz and Kurt, and latterly Sri Lanka has at its centre an undeniable contradiction. A nation which espoused and proclaimed peaceful Buddhism was caught their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in one of 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the bloodiest conflicts in empty market place, helping the recent pastneighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a conflict peppered with suicide bombings, mass killings, rapes, torture vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and imprisonmentworkmanlike as a light switch. But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and more than instead of having a hint of genocidenational vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. Gordon Weiss was intimately involved ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as a journalist and in Germany, as did all the United Nations Spokesman round-ups of Jews. These in Sri Lanka for two years their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the almost 40 years conflictUS, while Fritz and has produced a detailed account of his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the background same train to Buchenwald and eventual denouement the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this conflict.could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009954847X</amazonuk>024156574X
}}
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=The introduction to Archaeology cannot be child'On the Eves play, when you' begins with re scraping in the controversial statementdirt looking to find what you can find, 'Nor often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is anti-Semitism, by itself, a satisfactory explanation case of the Jew's predicament'. The latter, as our author has written a history promises to locate the topic of the post-war Jewry called the titular search. And he really hasn''Vanishing Diaspora'' but this book examines t made it easy for himself – the collective failure by search area is a wide one, the Jewish people before 1939 target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to attain at least some control over a particular D-Day veteran through helping the threatening vagaries of fateheroic old man'. It examines their failure s visit back to establish cohesive social linksFrance, political parties, hospitals, newspapers and schools. Jewish culture and religious practice weakened during our author has promised to find the very period when they advocated loyalty landing craft that delivered him to the states where they were citizens; the USSRNormandy, Poland, Germany and France. Their population too that he was in declinelucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. Wasserstein, who The secondary aim is to erect a master at pointing out intriguing and surprising detailmemorial to everyone else aboard, explains that on the brink vast majority of annihilation, there were actually more Jews held whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in camps outside the Third Reich than within it.their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846681804</amazonuk>1472146182
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nigel SaulB09F4CTKJR|title=For Honour and Fame: Chivalry in England 1066-1500Flights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryHistorical Fiction|summary=Chivalry, Saul tells us in It's the opening sentences later stages of World War I and the preface, United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is associated first a young American who has signed up and foremost with joined the estate of knighthood and with fighting on horseback17 Aero Squadron. In this book he aims This company was the first US Aero Squadron to present an account of English aristocratic society be trained in the Middle AgesCanada, from the Norman conquest first to be attached to the RAF and the first years of to be sent into the skies to fight the Tudor dynastyGermans in active combat. But before that can happen, which puts chivalry centre-stagePetrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951891</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert K Massie0578761718|title=Catherine the Great: Portrait The Inspiring History of a WomanSpecial Relationship|author=Nancy Carver
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=In the introduction to this book Eamon Duffy, Professor The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the History City of Christianity London from at Cambridge Historyleast 1181, points out that all too often historians have written about the English Reformation from strongly polarised viewswhen it was first mentioned in records. Taking two extreme examplesSadly, he cites one which states that the original church was destroyed in the people Great Fire of England, formerly happy medieval Catholics, were forced London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by King Henry to abandon their religionSir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, and England when it was never merry again, alongside another which speaks of the English being oppressed ruined by corrupt churchmen until King Henry gave them bombs during the Protestant nation for which they longedBlitz. On But that wasn't the following pageend of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, he suggests that it had long been an axiom of historical writing that the success of stones from the Reformation church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in England was an inevitable consequence the grounds of Westminster College, the dysfunction church was rebuilt and unpopularity of late medieval Catholicism. Such remarks were evidently made by writers with an axe today serves as a memorial to grindWinston Churchill. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441181172</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Winter1784385166|title=Defeating HitlerThe Third Reich in 100 Objects: Whitehall's Top Secret Report on Why Hitler Lost the WarA Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse|rating=45
|genre=History
|summary=Just how and why did Hitler lose What is the Second World War? The message in [[Fatherland by Robert Harris]] is first image that he spent too much effort killing Jews comes to concentrate on anything else. Remarkably, this look at more explicit reasons for the end mind when you think 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 by what would now have ? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to be called Whitehall Mandarins, written during a year concentration camp? None of war and a year these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of peace, that itemises for those with enough security clearance just what Hitlerthe Third Reich's chain of command was, fascist regime in all its iniquity. But some objects and what his thinking was for each theatre of the Warimages from that time may be less familiar to you. It was never Top SecretIn this short volume, but was classified for thirty years and Roger Moorhouse has spent about as long waiting for this hardback versionattempted to illustrate the period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441196358</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jean-Paul KauffmannLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=A Journey to NowhereTiananmen 1989: Among the Lands and History of CourlandOur Shattered Hopes
|rating=4.5
|genre=TravelGraphic Novels|summary=When I turn to travel writing, never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it is a healthy balance was playing out – someone in the second half of that about places I have been totheir teens has other priorities, and places I've notyou know. But without sounding too big-headed it is seldom places I have never heard certainly didn't know of in any context - especially those I have passed through, what's more. The 'nowhere' in focus here is Courland, which was more-or-less the coastal slither weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the top massacre and the birth of Latviathe Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and was once an independent DuchyI didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. In one fell swoop Kauffmann seems to become the only travel writer to have written a This book about the place, at least for many is practically flawless in giving a generation, and, itgeneral browser's pleasant to say, probably context for the best one could have hoped forwhole season of protests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050362</amazonuk>1684056993
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Penelope Hughes-Hallett0648684806|title=Clara Colby: The Immortal Dinner: A famous evening of genius and laughter in literary London, 1817International Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryBiography|summary=A book based around The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just one dinner sounds a little extraordinarythree-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. But the hostInstead, she remained with her grandparents, painter Benjamin Robert Haydonwho doted on her and saw that she received a good education, was no ordinary artistboth in and out of school. He She was a friend of many of the major artistic only child in the household and literary figures her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the dayUnited States and life was hard, in addition as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to being an ambitious painter of historical scenesjoin the family. SadlyClara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, his ambition was not matched by popularity or good fortunehad ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and despite or perhaps parly because an exaggerated belief died in his own abilitieschildbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, one a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a half centuries after his death he is largely forgotten except for his suicide after years of despair, and perhaps his diary as wellrude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956372X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Martin1783784350|title=Underground OvergroundThis Golden Fleece: A PassengerJourney Through Britain's Knitted History of the Tube |author=Esther Rutter|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Although he It was born December and Esther Rutter was stuck in Yorkshireher office job, Andrew Martin has long been enthralled by the London Undergroundwriting to people she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. His father worked on British Rail, The job frustrated her 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 networkeven her knitting did not soothe her mind. Having lived in London for twenty-five years, commuting January was going to various newspaper offices in his employment as be a journalisttime for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, a job which has included writing a regular magazine column, Tube Talk, he is well qualified to write this entertaining discovering and enlightening social history telling the story of the worldwool's most famous underground railwayhistory and how it had made and changed the landscape.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684773</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary Beard|title=All She'd grown up on a sheep farm in a DonSuffolk - 's Day|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Mary Beard's latest collection, 'All in a Donfree-range child on the farm's Day'- and learned to spin, of knit and weave from her assembled blog pieces from 2009 until the end of 2011, covers similar concerns to mother and her previous selection, [[It's A Donmother's Life by Mary Beard|It's a Don's Life]]friend. Professor Beard is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and became Classics Professor at there This was in 2004. She is also an expert in Roman laughter, an interest which she fully indulges in the pages of her TLS blog. In her latest collection she bemoans the parlous current state of both Education and the Academy, and makes witty observations on matters as various as television chefs, what and how to visit in Rome and the art and worth of completing references in an age when only positive things may be said about postgraduate job-seekersblood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685362</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=R I Moore1789017977|title=The Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War On Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval EuropeII|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=At Ronnie Williams was the end son of the first millenniumThomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, Western Europe but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a place which had barely ever encountered heresyfew years off his age. It took just For a couple of centuries for it while the family was quite well-to become a major problem -do but disaster struck in the eyes of church leaders, leading 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to the persecution of individuals and groupsa very different lifestyle. Was heresy such a fast One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-growing problem? In out and this volume, R I Moore provides a thoughtful analysis of would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the issues and makes a powerful case that many supposed heretics were merely victims of a paranoid church which created propaganda to justify so many deathsarmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681960</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Julius Norwich1980891117|title=The PopesG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A Historyyear in the life of George Engleheart|author=John Webley
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryArt|summary=Historian [[:Category:John Julius Norwich|John Julius Norwich]] (or Rt Hon/Viscount John Julius NorwichGeorge Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to give him his full titlethe Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III) doesn't write . Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the sort names of history books one associates with school days. He doesn't do dry each of his clients, and dusty. In fact ''The Popes: A History'' isn't ''just'' a history subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book but a romp through the ages with some great trivia nuggets scattered throughout the informative gold.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565870</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emma Smith1789016304|title=The Cambridge Shakespeare GuideWar and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Peter Ackroyd is already well-known as a historian 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 LondonAnn Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. As a kind of adjunct to his mammoth work on A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the cityduring the war years, here we have but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a comparatively slender tome on one specific aspectcountry with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Underneath Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city is a world of its own, of springs, streams, Roman amphitheatres, Victorian sewers, gang hideoutswere convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the creatures which have dwelt Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in its darkness from rats and eels to monsters and hoststhe way that it did, and last but not least initial protests melted away as the modern Underground railway systemorganisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287374</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Ackroyd1908745819|title=London: The Concise BiographySurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=As is Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case with his recent volume on Charles Dickens, AckroydI was told why. The blurb speaks of the author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's London is an abridged version not a bad description of the full book originally published twelve years agowhere I am. NeverthelessAdd to that my love of the natural world, at over 600 pages of fairly close print in paperbackthose aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to have it is still a very full readfall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570386</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Stafford0857058320|title=Mission Accomplished: SOE Lord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Italy 1943 - 1945Anne McLean (translator)|rating=3.54
|genre=History
|summary=The work of ''Lord Of All the secret services Dead'' is always going a journey to be shady, dark uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and murkydeath. Books like David StaffordCercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's Mission Accomplished: SOE and Italy 1943 - 1945 make an effort to shine a light on death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the shadows and bring figure who looms large over the facts into viewbook. StaffordHe died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's admirably honest introduction claims that he has 'done [forces. Cercas ruminates on why his] best to ensure that what appears here uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the centre of this book is accurate and truthful', but reminds his reader that 'history whether it is indeed intrinsically messy'; even more so when possible for his sources were writing with secrecy in mindgreat uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531836</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Bushkovitch0008294011|title=A Concise History of RussiaHow to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Russia's recent history, especially since the end of the Cold War, has been so full of new developments that there is probably A little while ago a friend asked me if any limit I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the number of fresh histories question ''Discuss the market can absorbfactors which led to... '' This most recent, from I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a Professor 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 History at Yale University, take losing democracy and whilst it's a little over 450 pages to tell the story from the earliest days flawed system I can't think of Kiev Rusa better one, particularly as the territory which was to become the ancestor of the present nation state around the 10th century AD, to Vladimir Putin'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's assumption of office as President in 2000teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521543231</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chil Rajchman1788037812|title=TreblinkaThe Fraternity of the Estranged: A Survivor's MemoryThe Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Here comes yet another book about Originally passed in 1885, the Holocaustlaw that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and yet another with more than enough damning indictment John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of those events society and their perpetratorsstudying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, with more than enough horrific reportage so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to make your blood run coldthe scientific understanding of homosexuality, and with more than enough distinguishing features to make it a necessary purchase. The latter is partly down to where it came from - while Dachau started out as a camp beginning the struggle for political prisoners, recognition 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 Treblinkaequality, which was constructed purely and simply leading to kill. It has rightly been called a 'conveyerthe milestone legalisation of same-belt executioner's block'sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849163995</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Johanna Adorjan1910593508|title=An Exclusive Love|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=This moving memoir tells of 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 granddaughter, Joanna Adorján and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with Vera, with whom the author shares many characteristics. The story begins with the systematic persecution of such Hungarian Jews in Budapest under the Nazi occupation and describes their perilous flight to Denmark after the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956. It ends with the police reports of the duty officer dated 15.10.91 with the discovery of their bodies in their bungalow in the Charlottenlund, a town 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 and memorable. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552671</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewApollo|author=David Loades|title=The Tudors: 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 collectivelyMatt Fitch, 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 Chris Baker 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 AdvertisementMike Collins
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=You might think This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Lonely Hearts ad a trivial matter. You might think it should appear in lower case Moon landings and not be capitalisedthe passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, but you'd be in disagreement with Ms Beauman, who gives Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a big L story we know well and because of this, the authors take a big H few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to it every time she writes of it in her survey of its historythe book. WhatIf you's more, she gets to write about ve ever read a lot more than just the contents comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the adverts in this brilliant bookslight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and still felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009951334X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roman Krznaric1786331047|title=The WonderboxRace to Save the Romanovs: Curious Histories of How The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to LiveRescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport
|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 basic facts about the future deaths of the art Nicholas and Alexandra, some of living can be found by gazing into the past', he says. Creating a book which is as full of curiosities as a Renaissance 'Wunderkammer', he has a stab were deliberately obscured at the big questions: lovetime for various reasons, belief, money, family, death. The result is a pot-pourri of delights which left this particular reader stimulated and invigoratedhave long since been established.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683939</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James Palmer|title=The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and For the Birth last few months of their lives in Russia the New China|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Welcome to China, where the populous are busy leaving a rural country full of prosperous mineral resources former Tsar and coal minesTsarina, their children and shoddily-built hydro-electric dams few remaining servants were held in environmentally dubious locations, for the burgeoningincreasingly squalid, mechanised citieshumiliating captivity. But this isn't the birth of 2012To prevent them from being rescued, it's in July 1918 the dawn of 1976. Chairman Mao is dying, Premier Zhou Enlai has just diedrevolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to death in circumstances which, and the cauldron of power is being stirred as never before. Among once the momentous events of the year however will be a huge earthquake directly centred on the city of Tangshannews was confirmed beyond all doubt, which will kill something like two thirds of a million peoplehorrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571243991</amazonuk>
}}
