Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|History]]==History==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pam Weaver1785633457|title=Bath Times and Nursery RhymesCharging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=45|genre=AutobiographyTravel|summary=In 1961, Clive Wilkinson has a young 16 year old girl called Pam Weaver embarks on history of travelling by unconventional means with a career path that will change her lifepreference for slow travel. Fed up with As he neared his eightieth birthday the tedium idea of working on exploring the broken biscuit counter at Woolworthsedges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, she decides to train it should be a pleasant holiday for her NNEB. ''Bath Times and Nursery Rhymes'' sees Pam progress from a shy and awkward teenager to a competent Clive and caring nursery nurse. Reluctant to stay too long in any positionhis wife, Pam tries her hand at a variety of jobsJoan, including her initial employment in a Council-run children’s home, working as a private nanny to a rich young widow and an eventful but emotional stint in a premature baby ward.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007488440</amazonuk>shouldn't it?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Derek NiemannB09BLBP3P8|title=Birds in a CageNeville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager

|summary=''Birds in a Cage'' introduces the reader to John Received wisdom and his fellow officers: Peter Conder, George Waterston and John Henry Barrett and shows how their shared love of birds enabled them simplified narrative often lead to create an emotional escape misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the gruelling conditions that surrounded them in popular imagination of the prisoner early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the ''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war camp at Warburg. The men banded together to form a birdwatching society within the campbreaking out, making meticulous observations of the lives of the birds nesting and Churchill coming in and around to save the areaday. These detailed records went Very little time is spent on to become valuable scientific documentsthis period in cultural reflections and yet, as they recorded the lives and habits Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was of birds vital significance in painstaking detail, revealing previously unknown facts about species such as how the redstart and goldfinchwar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720939</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick3756228711|title=CDC: The Untold History of the United Stateshappy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans Bodmer|rating=4.5

|summary=It's been said that history is written by the victors. It would also be pertinent to add that the writing will always polish up the worthy parts whilst whilst finding a convenient carpet under which can be swept the events which are best forgotten. There's no country with a victory under its belt which is above this practice: I've just been brought up very sharply as I considered the Irish potato famine from the [[The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy by Tim Pat Coogan|Irish perspective]]. That's a story you'll not read in many British history books. The majority of British people would accept though that their country has had an imperialist past - and that the natives have not always thrown themselves down in front development of us in their joy at our arrivalIT could fill books of several hundred pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091949297</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Jacob F Field|title=One Bloody Thing After Another|rating=3Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that.5|genre=History|summary=While other authors have made He has chosen to tell us about the case for mankind easing off in the destruction stakes recentlyshort, and becoming less hostilebut explosive, bloodthirsty and cruel than in history of the pastControl Data Company, it doesn’t mean that our global history is not littered with detailCDC, about mutinies, massacres and murdersfor whom he worked. Mr Field here gathers the gamut of gore from the time when the only people writing down their history were the Chinese, up until the late nineteenth centuryIt's a fascinating tale, and covers the planet told in search a mixture of slicing, dicing technological summary and deathly devices. It certainly lives up to its titlewry anecdote.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843178842</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Graeme DonaldJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=When the Earth Was FlatFritz and Kurt

|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=Mankind has often had some quite ridiculous ideas. Once upon a time people deemed it sensible for doctors We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to go from an autopsy room to help give birth without washing hands in between do – who'd have thought kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it might be beneficial? Those self-same medical scientists were within generations going comes to extol the virtues of cocaine synagogue choir and opium as harmless boosts at a vocational school. Kurt has to medicine, and in make sure the interim proudly induce enemas of tobacco smoke lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the early version of colonic irrigation so beloved of some dodgy ex-Princess-type peopleSabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. Outside But this is the time just before the medical roomAustrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, there was once and instead of having a national vote to keep the notion that the Earth was flat – although not as might be popularly believedNazis out, a regular idea invite them in Columbuswith open arms. 's days'Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, but certainly at times before thenas did all the round-ups of Jews. The spread These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of man's idiocy where wrongan evacuation to Britain or the US, faulty while Fritz and dodgy science is concernedhis father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the history stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all the false ideas, is touched on in this fascinating volume.could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843178680</amazonuk>024156574X

 {{newreview|author=Tim Pat Coogan|title=The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=The great famine of Ireland in the 1840s was a major disaster and a tragedy. As a result, about a million of its citizens died from starvation and a further million emigrated, with so many perishing en route that it was said ''you can walk dry shod to America on their bodies.'' The net total was about a quarter of the existing population. Yet as Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan argues in this account, the famine was more than a tragedy. The title indicates a fierce polemic, and the thrust of his book is that the British government of the day was not merely responsible for exacerbating the famine conditions through mismanagement and failure to respond adequately to the failure of the potato crop, but in fact deliberately engineered a food shortage in what was one of the earliest cases of ethnic cleansing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230109527</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=John O'ConnellHenry Phillips|title=For the Love of Letters: The Joy of Slow CommunicationSearch|rating=4.5

|summary=With Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the advent of mobile phones and e-maildirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is there still a place case of the latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for good old-fashioned letter-writing in himself – the world today? John O'Connell certainly thinks there search area isa wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and has written it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a compelling argument in this book whichparticular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, if you haven't put pen our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to paper for some timeNormandy, may be enough and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to remind you of everyone else aboard, the benefits vast majority of slower correspondence whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in today's high-speed world.their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780721099</amazonuk>1472146182

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roger OsborneB09F4CTKJR|title=Of the People, By the People: A New History of DemocracyFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer

|genre=Politics and SocietyHistorical Fiction|summary=Most authors writing on It's the subject later stages of democracy tend to concentrate on political theoryWorld War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Osborne approaches Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the subject from 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the historical angle insteadfirst US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, looking at different democracies from that of Greece in the sixth century BC, first to be attached to the present day. 'Humanity's finest achievement', as Osborne calls it in RAF and the first sentence of his prologue, comes from to be sent into the Greek words ''demos'' (people) and ''kratos'' (rule). It had its origins in skies to fight the system devised Germans in ancient Athensactive combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the earliest in the world which did not first operate through complex relations of kinship and deference, as had others up to thennotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel. Parallels would be seen in Rome a few centuries later.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845950623</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Karen Dolby0578761718|title=Oranges and Lemons: Rhymes From Past TimesThe Inspiring History of a Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver

|summary=Karen Dolby's book is a loving look The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at nursery rhymes least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, the original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from many different times a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and placesthen survived for centuries until World War II, handily organised into groups like when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that wasn'Monday's Child: The Rhythm t the end of Days' and 'Oranges and Lemonsits story: Songs and Gamesafter a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. In addition to There, in the rhymes themselvesgrounds of Westminster College, Dolby sets them into context the church was rebuilt and tells us of the stories behind themtoday serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843179598</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Catherine Bailey1784385166|title=The Secret RoomsThird Reich in 100 Objects: A True Gothic MysteryMaterial History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse|rating=4.5

|summary=Like many an enthralling novel, this book starts with What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a death concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. But some objects and images from natural causes yet in odd circumstances which initially leaves several questions unansweredthat time may be less familiar to you. In factthis short volume, in spite Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the period of the subtitle, and also knowing nothing about the family whose story it tells in part, I had to look Third Reich through the book thoroughly before reading, to satisfy myself that it actually was non-fictionone hundred of its material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917559</amazonuk> 

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patricia Malcolmson and Robert Malcolmson (Editors)|title=The Diaries of Nella Last: Writing in War and Peace|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=This work brings together a selection of some of Nella Last's diary entries from the 1940's and 1950's. She wrote from her home in Barrow-in-Furness as part of the Mass Observation project, writing a huge amount of material, some of which has already been published as ''Nella Last's War''Lun Zhang, [[Nella Last's Peace: The Post-war Diaries of Housewife 49 by Patricia Malcolmson (Editor)Adrien Gombeaud, Robert Malcolmson (Editor)|Nella Last's Peace]] and [[Nella Last in the 1950s: The Further Diaries of Housewife, 49 by Patricia Malcolmson Ameziane and Robert Malcolmson Edward Gauvin (Editorstranslator)|Nella Last in the 1950s]] This volume brings together the three previous collections, with new material too, taking the reader through the war years and on into post-war Britain.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668546X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sarah Wise|title=Inconvenient PeopleTiananmen 1989: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian EnglandOur Shattered Hopes

|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=Many a family I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in Victorian England had a problem husband, wifethe second half of their teens has other priorities, son or daughter whom they felt ought to be ‘locked away’you know. Only occasionally if ever was it for totally unselfish reasons connected with their mental health I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and well-being. More often than not it was to settle old scores, or so hunger strikes from the family could get their hands on students before the victim’s fortune or business, or sometimes because, as massacre and the title birth of this book suggeststhe Tank Man image, they were merely ‘inconvenient’.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847921124</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gavin Mortimer|title=A History of Football in 100 Objects|rating=4|genre=Sport|summary=Given I didn't know how the area had long it's been played a venue for political protest, and how many books have been written I didn't know more than a spit about it, any new history of football needs to have some kind of hook to make it stand outthe people involved on either side. Gavin Mortimer may have found that, by presenting his history as ''A History of Football This book is practically flawless in 100 Objectsgiving a general browser''. This prompts the question as to whether s context for the whole season of football could be reduced down to a mere century of objects. But then, if [[From 0 to Infinity protests back in 26 Centuries by Chris Waring]] can make a history of maths worth reading, I guess anything is possible1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781250618</amazonuk>1684056993

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Victoria Glendinning0648684806|title=Raffles And the Golden OpportunityClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|summary=Although Raffles has gone down in history as The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the founder time she was just three-years-old but because of Singapore his roots were far from grandsome childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. He had no advantages apart from his own drive Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and determination and his professional life began with saw that she received a lowly clerkship with the East india Companygood education, then as large both in and ungainly as many a governmentout of school. When he went abroad on behalf of She was the Company he quickly learned only child in the merits of doing something household and asking permission afterwardsher childhood was glorious. By contrast, not least because her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the time taken United States and life was hard, as Clara was to contact London find out when she and then receive her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a replyfew months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. Even if all went well this could take As the best part of eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a year - by which time the original question could well be academicrude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686032</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Max Decharne1783784350|title=Capital CrimesThis Golden Fleece: Seven centuries of London life and murderA Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|rating=4.5|genre=True Crime|summary=True crime has been one of the great growth areas of publishing in the last few years. As more than one author in the field as observed, everyone loves a good murder in a manner of speaking, and anybody who is looking for books on murders in London will find no lack of choice.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847945902</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sarah Herman|title=The Classic Guide to Famous Assassinations (Classic Guides)Esther Rutter|rating=4.5

|summary=If you ever wanted It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to know people she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the details length and breadth of famous assassinationsthe British Isles with occasional forays abroad, this is almost certainly discovering and telling the book you've been waiting for. In an easy to read style with lots story of bullet points and box-outs, Sarah Herman talks us through historywool's most famous killings history and how it had made and failed attemptschanged the landscape. Starting with Greek She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the farm'' - and Roman timeslearned to spin, subsequent chapters move through religious knit and royal victims, revolutionaries, Russians weave from her mother and American politiciansher mother's friend. This was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780950144</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carola Hicks1789017977|title=Girl in Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a Green Gown: The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini PortraitNew Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=The Arnolfini marriage portrait, Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as it is generally if perhaps inaccurately known, painted by Flemish artist Jan van Eyck, signed Harry) and dated 1434Ethel 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, has long been one of the most popular but he was already many years older than Ethel and enigmatic paintings of its timehe might well have shaved a few years off his age. Of modest size, For a little less than three feet high, it is one of while the oldest surviving panel pictures family was quite well-to be painted -do but disaster struck in oils rather than temperathe 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. It is also regarded as the first work of art which simultaneously celebrates both middleOne thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-class comfort out and monogamous marriagethis would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526891</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tracy Borman1980891117|title=MatildaG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: Wife of A year in the Conqueror, first Queen life of EnglandGeorge Engleheart|author=John Webley

|genre=BiographyArt|summary=Writing George Engleheart was one of the biography leading portrait miniaturists of any woman who lived as long ago as the eleventh centuryGeorgian London, even someone as illustrious as with a Queen, is a pretty thankless task. There will always be huge gaps in career lasting from the 1770s to the knowledge availableRegency era. For example we do not know when Matilda He was bornalso one of the most prolific, and likewise we do not have a precise date for her marriagepainting nearly 5, although we do know when she died000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). No lifelike images Throughout most of her are known, though evidence suggests that she was quite short time he carefully recorded the names of stature. In a male-dominated society, there are approximate records each of when her sons were bornhis clients, but not her daughters. Even more confusingly perhaps, many of the stories passed down to us throughout history are quite probably false. It and subsequently transcribed them into what is hardly surprising that this appears referred to be the first full-length life of her yet to appear in Englishas his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549131</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Shepherd1789016304|title=WestminsterWar and Love: A biographyfamily's testament of anguish, from earliest times to the presentendurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin

|summary=There seems Melanie Martin read about what happened to be no shortage of ways Dutch Jews in which the history of London can be told, occupied Amsterdam during World War II and as befitting an experienced historical and political biographerwas entranced by what she discovered, Shepherd has found another interesting variation on the themeparticularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. In this superbly detailed A hundred and exhaustively researched volume, he brings us seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the story of Westminsterwar 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 royal capital occupation could never happen: even those who thought that became the birthplace of parliamentary government and Germans might reach the centre of a world power. Over 1500 years ago it was Thorney Islandcity were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, a secluded area on that the banks of Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the Thames. It then became a villageway that it did, yet a very grand one comprising a spiritual centre, a royal ceremonial stage and later a political capital, encompassing buildings such but initial protests melted away as the Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, and 10 Downing Streetorganisers became more circumspect. Against this stage has been enacted the history It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of a nation, tens of the monarchs and politicians who for better and worse shaped the events thousands of the last thousand yearsindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0826423809</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ann Wroe1908745819|title=Orpheus, The Song Of Life|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Orpheus is one of the most memorable and recognisable figures of Greek mythology. He was a legendary musician and poet, whose song could charm all living things and indeed the very stones of the earth. He had a dramatic life, including joining the Argonauts as they searched for the golden fleece. Most memorably, he travelled to Hades to rescue his dead wife Eurydice from the underworld. However, he was unable to obey Pluto’s command not to look at her. He couldn’t resist turning around, only to see her sucked back into the depths and death. This tale of romantic tragedy and thwarted love has intrigued and delighted artists and writers through the centuries, and they have portrayed Orpheus and his life in music, paintings, plays, poems, operas and films ever since.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951689</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSurfacing|author=Alison Maloney|title=Bright Young ThingsKathleen Jamie|rating=45

|summary=According to the summary I Sometimes when people suggest that you read of a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it'Bright Young Things'. 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' before choosing t like the book . That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to readhearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of the author considering 'takes a sweeping look at the changing world 'an older, less tethered sense of the Jazz Ageherself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I was expecting it am. Add to be something that my love of a narrative account the natural world, of those aspects of the Roaring Twenties – in actual factpoetic and lyrical that are about style not form, it's set out as a collection and substance most of trivia all, about the decadeconnection. SimilarlyOf course, the 'first person accounts' mentioned this book had my name on the inside front cover are limited it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to two or three sentence quoteshave it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753540975</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neil Root0857058320|title=Frenzy!: How Lord Of All the tabloid press turned three evil serial killers into celebritiesDead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

|summary=It was forever thus. Only last year, 2011, did ''Lord Of All the Dead''News of is a journey to uncover the Worldauthor's lost ancestor' s life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle''Sunday Mirror'' stop being the double-headed monster of tabloid journalism, and very little was different s death in the 1950sSpanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, beyond the inclusion of boobiesCercas' great uncle, and is the fact the ''Mirror'' was then just figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco''Sunday Pictorial''s forces. Both formed a duopoly Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for those in their audience seeking all this dictator. The question at the salacious details centre of the scandals of the day, and the crimes and criminals people would talk about over their breakfasts. Three men stood out in those days for the ways in which they achieved their notoriety, and this book is an account of their goings-on, and how the press reported the stories – at times paying large fortunes whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the privilegewrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099557762</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert O Bucholz and Joseph P Ward0008294011|title=London: A Social and Cultural History, 1550-1750|rating=4|genre=History|summary=It seems hard How to visualise Lose a time when London was just a city of no major importance, except as England’s capital. Country: The main thrust of this book is only about halfway through the Tudor area did it really rise to global prominence and come 7 Steps from Democracy to dominate the economic, political, social and cultural life of the nation as it never had before – and arguably since. By 1750 it had also surpassed Amsterdam as Europe’s financial and banking hub, and become 'a cornucopia of culture' through its vibrant concert and theatre life, to say nothing of a thriving and relatively free press. Before long it would also become the home of the British Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts. Lest this testimonial seems too gilded, we are reminded at the same time that the city was one of palaces and slums, concert halls and gin joints, churches and brothels, possibility and fear. Good and evil were always side by side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521896525</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gordon Weiss|title=The Cage|rating=4|genre=History|summary=The history of Ceylon, and latterly Sri Lanka has at its centre an undeniable contradiction. A nation which espoused and proclaimed peaceful Buddhism was caught in one of the bloodiest conflicts in the recent past, a conflict peppered with suicide bombings, mass killings, rapes, torture and imprisonment, and more than a hint of genocide. Gordon Weiss was intimately involved as a journalist and as the United Nations Spokesman in Sri Lanka for two years of the almost 40 years conflict, and has produced a detailed account of the background and eventual denouement of this conflict.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954847X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDictatorship|author=Frank McLynn|title=The Road Not Taken: How Britain narrowly missed a revolutionEce Temelkuran

|summary=Since A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question ''Discuss the Norman conquest, there have been no successful invasions of Britainfactors which led to... '' Yet according I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to this book, during . I think now that era the country has come close to revolution on seven occasionsI do know. These were the Peasants' Revolt We are in danger of 1381, Jack Cadelosing democracy and whilst it's rebellion a flawed system I can't think of 1450a better one, particularly as the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, the English Civil War in the 1640s, the Jacobite rising in 1745-6, the Chartist Movement of the early Victorian era, and finally the General Strike of 1926. In each case, social turbulence threatened the status quo but went no further'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth. Why and how did they ultimately fail?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224072935</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bernard Wasserstein1788037812|title=On The Fraternity of the EveEstranged: The Jews of Europe before the Second World WarFight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson

|summary=The introduction to 'On Originally passed in 1885, the Eve' begins with the controversial statementlaw that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, 'Nor is antirestrictions on same-Semitismsex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by itselftwo homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, a satisfactory explanation of as well as the Jew's predicament'heterosexual Havelock Ellis. The author has written a history Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the post-war Jewry called the ''Vanishing Diaspora'' European Continent, but this book examines barely talked about in the collective failure by UK, so the Jewish people before 1939 'publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to attain at least some control over the threatening vagaries scientific understanding of fate'. It examines their failure to establish cohesive social links, political parties, hospitalshomosexuality, newspapers and schools. Jewish culture and religious practice weakened during the very period when they advocated loyalty to the states where they were citizens; beginning the USSR, Poland, Germany struggle for recognition and France. Their population too was in decline. Wassersteinequality, who is a master at pointing out intriguing and surprising detail, explains that on leading to the brink milestone legalisation of annihilation, there were actually more Jews held same-sex relationships in camps outside the Third Reich than within it1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681804</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nigel Saul1910593508|title=For Honour Apollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Fame: Chivalry in England 1066-1500Mike Collins|rating=4.5

|summary=Chivalry, Saul tells us in This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the opening sentences of passion for the prefacesubject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is associated first a story we know well and foremost with the estate because of knighthood and with fighting on horseback. In this book he aims to present an account of English aristocratic society , the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the Middle Ages, from blanks. These shortcuts are the Norman conquest only downside to the first years book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the Tudor dynasty, which puts chivalry centre-stageslight 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>1845951891</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert K Massie1786331047|title=Catherine The Race to Save the GreatRomanovs: Portrait of a Woman|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Already known for major biographies of Nicholas and Alexandra, and of Peter The Truth Behind the Great, Massie has now written an equally full and absorbing life of the late eighteenth-century reigning Empress.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0679456724</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSecret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Eamon Duffy|title=Saints, Sacrilege and SeditionHelen Rappaport|rating=45

|summary=In The basic facts about the introduction to this book Eamon Duffydeaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, Professor some of which were deliberately obscured at the History of Christianity at Cambridge Historytime for various reasons, points out that all too often historians have written about the English Reformation from strongly polarised viewslong since been established. Taking two extreme examples, he cites one which states that For the people last few months of England, formerly happy medieval Catholicstheir lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, their children and few remaining servants were forced by King Henry to abandon their religionheld in increasingly squalid, and England was never merry againhumiliating captivity. To prevent them from being rescued, alongside another which speaks of in July 1918 the English being oppressed by corrupt churchmen until King Henry gave revolutionary regime had them the Protestant nation for all shot and bayoneted to death in circumstances which they longed. On , once the following pagenews was confirmed beyond all doubt, he suggests that it had long been an axiom of historical writing that the success of the Reformation horrified their relatives 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 grindEurope. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441181172</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Paul Winter|title=Defeating Hitler: Whitehall's Top Secret Report Move on Why Hitler Lost 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 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 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>}} {{newreview|author=Jean-Paul Kauffmann|title=A Journey to Nowhere: Among the Lands and History of Courland|rating=4.5|genre=Travel|summary=When I turn to travel writing, it is a healthy balance 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 more. The 'nowhere' in focus here is Courland, which was more-or-less the coastal slither of the top of Latvia, and was once an independent Duchy. In one fell swoop Kauffmann seems to become the only travel writer to have written a book about the place, at least for many a generation, and, it's pleasant to say, probably the best one could have hoped for.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050362</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Penelope Hughes-Hallett|title=The Immortal Dinner: A famous evening of genius and laughter in literary London, 1817|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=A book based around just one dinner sounds a little extraordinary. But the host, painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, was no ordinary artist. He was a friend of many of the major artistic and literary figures of the day, in addition to being an ambitious painter of historical scenes. Sadly, his ambition was not matched by popularity or good fortune, and despite or perhaps parly because an exaggerated belief in his own abilities, one and a half centuries after his death he is largely forgotten except for his suicide after years of despair, and perhaps his diary as well.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956372X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrew Martin|title=Underground Overground: A Passenger's History of the Tube |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 history of the world's most famous underground railway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684773</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary Beard|title=All in a Don's Day|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Mary Beard's latest collection, 'All in a Don's Day', of her assembled blog pieces from 2009 until the end of 2011, covers similar concerns to her previous selection, [[It's A Don's Life by Mary Beard|It's a Don's Life]]. Professor Beard is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge Newest Home and became Classics Professor at there 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-seekers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685362</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=R I Moore|title=The War On Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe|rating=4|genre=History|summary=At the end of the first millennium, Western Europe was a place which had barely ever encountered heresy. It took just a couple of centuries for it to become a major problem in the eyes of church leaders, leading to the persecution of individuals and groups. Was heresy such a fast-growing problem? In this volume, R I Moore provides a thoughtful analysis of 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 deaths.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681960</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Julius Norwich|title=The Popes: A History|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Historian [[:Category:John Julius Norwich|John Julius NorwichFamily Reviews]] (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>}}