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[[Category:New Reviews|History]]__NOTOC__ <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{Frontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=History5|genre=Travel|summary=Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?__NOTOC__}}{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B09BLBP3P8|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Catherine FletcherFrederic Seager|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the ''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in to save the day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was of vital significance in how the war played out.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=3756228711|title=The Divorce of Henry VIIICDC: The Untold Storyhappy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans Bodmer

|summary=Henry VIII’s protracted divorce from Catherine ''The history of Aragon, often referred to as ‘The King’s Great Matter’, has been described in detail many times before. In this book on the subject, the focus is on the role development of IT could fill books of Italian diplomat, Gregorio Casali, ‘our man in Rome’, as the hardback edition was titledseveral hundred pages. In the preface, Ms Fletcher explains '' Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that . He has chosen to tell us about the average reader may be conversant with the basic facts of Henry and his six wivesshort, but has probably never heard explosive, history of Casalithe Control Data Company, who played CDC, for whom he worked. It's a lengthy role fascinating tale, told in the proceedingsa mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554895</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pam WeaverJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Bath Times Fritz and Nursery RhymesKurt

|genre=AutobiographyConfident Readers|summary=In 1961We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a young 16 year old girl called Pam Weaver embarks 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 workmanlike as a career path that will change her lifelight switch. Fed up with But this is the time just before the tedium Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of working on having a national vote to keep the broken biscuit counter at WoolworthsNazis out, she decides to train for her NNEBinvite them in with open arms. ''Bath Times and Nursery RhymesKristallnacht'' sees Pam progress from a shy happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and awkward teenager sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to a competent Britain or the US, while Fritz and caring nursery nurse. Reluctant his father are, unknown initially to stay too long in any positioneach other, Pam tries her hand at a variety packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of jobsall this could come about…|isbn=024156574X}}{{Frontpage|author=John Henry Phillips|title=The Search|rating=5|genre=History|summary=Archaeology cannot be child's play, including her initial employment when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a Council-run children’s homecase of the latter, working as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a private nanny wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a rich young widow particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and an eventful but emotional stint in that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a premature baby wardmemorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007488440</amazonuk>1472146182

{{Frontpage|isbn= B09F4CTKJR|title= Flights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=It's the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0578761718|title=The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship|author=Derek NiemannNancy Carver|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at 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 a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that wasn't the end of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in the grounds of Westminster College, the church was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1784385166|title=Birds The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse|rating=5|genre=History|summary=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 Cageconcentration 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 that time may be less familiar to you. In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts. }}{{Frontpage|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes

|summary=''Birds It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in a Cage'her office job, writing to people she' introduces the reader to John d never met and his fellow officers: Peter Conder, George Waterston preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and John Henry Barrett even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be a time for making changes and shows how their shared love of birds enabled them to create an emotional escape from the gruelling conditions she decided that surrounded them in she would travel the prisoner length and breadth of war camp at Warburg. The men banded together to form a birdwatching society within the campBritish Isles with occasional forays abroad, making meticulous observations of discovering and telling the lives story of the birds nesting in wool's history and how it had made and around changed the arealandscape. These detailed records went She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the farm'' - and learned to become valuable scientific documentsspin, as they recorded the lives knit and weave from her mother and habits of birds her mother's friend. This was in painstaking detail, revealing previously unknown facts about species such as the redstart and goldfinchher blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720939</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1789017977|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Oliver Stone Wendy Williams|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Peter KuznickEthel 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, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1980891117|title=The Untold History G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of the United StatesGeorge Engleheart|author=John Webley

|summary=ItMelanie 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 been said that history is written by stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the victorswar 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. It Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would also soon be pertinent to add pushed back, that the writing will always polish up Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the worthy parts whilst whilst finding a convenient carpet under which can be swept way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the events which are best forgottenorganisers became more circumspect. ThereIt's no country with an atrocity on a victory under its belt which is above this practice: I've just been brought vast scale but made 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 tens of thousands of us in their joy at our arrivalindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091949297</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jacob F Field1908745819|title=One Bloody Thing After AnotherSurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie|rating=3.5

|summary=While other authors have made the case for mankind easing off in the destruction stakes recentlySometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, and becoming less hostilethey tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, bloodthirsty and cruel than in the pastor not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it doesn’t mean turns out that our global history is not littered with detailwe didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, about mutiniesrarely get it wrong. In this case, massacres and murdersI was told why. Mr Field here gathers The blurb speaks of the gamut author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of gore from the time when the only people writing down their history were the Chinesenatural world, up until of those aspects of the late nineteenth centurypoetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and covers the planet in search substance most of slicingall, dicing and deathly devicesabout connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. It certainly lives up was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to its titlehave it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843178842</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graeme Donald0857058320|title=When Lord Of All the Earth Was FlatDead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

|summary=Mankind has often had some quite ridiculous ideas. Once upon ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a time people deemed it sensible for doctors journey to go from an autopsy room to help give birth without washing hands in between – whouncover the author's lost ancestor'd have thought it might be beneficial? Those self-same medical scientists were within generations going to extol s life and death. Cercas is searching for the virtues of cocaine and opium as harmless boosts to medicine, and meaning behind his great uncle's death in the interim proudly induce enemas of tobacco smoke – the early version of colonic irrigation so beloved of some dodgy ex-Princess-type peopleSpanish Civil War. Outside the medical roomManuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, there was once is the notion that figure who looms large over the Earth was flat – although not as might be popularly believed, a regular idea in Columbusbook. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's days, but certainly at times before thenforces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The spread question at the centre of man's idiocy where wrong, faulty and dodgy science this book is whether it is concerned, and possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the history of all the false ideas, is touched on in this fascinating volumewrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843178680</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tim Pat Coogan0008294011|title=How to Lose a Country: The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran

|summary=The great famine of Ireland 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 1840s factors which led to...'' I agreed that she was a major disaster right and wasn't certain whether it was a tragedygood or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to. As I think now that I do know. We are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a result, about a million flawed system I can't think of its citizens died from starvation and a further million emigratedbetter one, with so many perishing en route that it was said particularly as the 'benevolent dictator'is as rare as hen'you can walk dry shod to America on their bodiess teeth.'' }}{{Frontpage|isbn=1788037812|title=The net total was about a quarter Fraternity of the existing populationEstranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=5|genre=History|summary=Originally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. Yet as Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan argues in But during this accounttime, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the famine was more than a tragedynature of homosexuality appeared. The title indicates a fierce polemicThey were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the thrust European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of his book is that these men were hugely significant – contributing to the British government scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the day was not merely responsible struggle for exacerbating recognition and equality, leading to the famine conditions through mismanagement milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1910593508|title=Apollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and failure to respond adequately Mike Collins|rating=5|genre=History|summary=This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the failure Moon landings and the passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of this, the potato crop, but authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in fact deliberately engineered the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to the book. If you've ever read a food shortage in what was one comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the earliest cases of ethnic cleansingslight 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.}}{{Frontpage|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0230109527</amazonuk>1786331047|title=The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport|rating=5|genre=History|summary=The basic facts about the deaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have long since been established. For the last few months of their lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, their children and few remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. To prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to death in circumstances which, once the news was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in Europe.