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[[Category:New Reviews|History]]__NOTOC__ <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{Frontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=HistoryCharging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=5__NOTOC__|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?}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jerry WhiteB09BLBP3P8|title=London in the 18th centuryNeville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager

|summary=White has already written accounts of London in the 19th Received wisdom and 20th centuries, and this simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the last in a planned trilogy. In 1700, according to an unnamed contemporary source, it was one scrubbing from the popular imagination of the ‘most Spaciousearly days of World War II from 1939-40, Populous, Rich, Beautiful, Renowned and Noble Citys that we know of at this day in known as the World’. It was also the largest city in Europe''Phoney War''. By the end of the centuryWe remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, it would double in extent and populationwar breaking out, and become the largest Churchill coming in to save the universeday. Carl Phillipp Moritz, a visitor from Germany Very little time is spent on this period in 1782, could climb St Paul's Cathedral cultural reflections and comment with amazement that he found it impossible to ascertain where London began or endedyet, ‘or where the circumjacent villages began; far as the eye could reachFrederic Seager argues in this book, it seemed to be all one continued chain’was of vital significance in how the war played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847921809</amazonuk>

Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of the Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, told in a mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote. }}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Catherine FletcherJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold StoryFritz and Kurt

|summary=Henry VIII’s protracted divorce from Catherine What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of Aragon, often referred the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to as ‘The King’s Great Matter’, has been described a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich's fascist regime in detail many times beforeall its iniquity. But some objects and images from that time may be less familiar to you. In this book on the subjectshort volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the focus is on period of the role Third Reich through one hundred of Italian diplomatits material artefacts. }}{{Frontpage|author=Lun Zhang, Gregorio CasaliAdrien Gombeaud, ‘our man Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in Rome’the second half of their teens has other priorities, as the hardback edition was titledyou know. In I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the preface, Ms Fletcher explains that students before the average reader may be conversant with massacre and the basic facts birth of Henry and his six wivesthe Tank Man image, but has probably never heard of CasaliI didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, who played and I didn't know more than a lengthy role spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the proceedingswhole season of protests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554895</amazonuk>1684056993

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pam Weaver0648684806|title=Bath Times and Nursery RhymesClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|genre=AutobiographyBiography|summary=In 1961, a young 16 year old girl called Pam Weaver embarks on a career The path that will change of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her lifefamily emigrated to the USA. Fed up with At the tedium time she was just three-years-old but because of working on the broken biscuit counter at Woolworthssome childhood ailment, she decides wasn't allowed to train for sail with her NNEBparents and three brothers. ''Bath Times Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and Nursery Rhymes'' sees Pam progress from saw that she received a shy good education, both in and awkward teenager to a competent and caring nursery nurseout of school. Reluctant to stay too long She was the only child in any position, Pam tries the household and her hand at a variety of jobschildhood was glorious. By contrast, including her initial employment family had become pioneer farmers in a Councilthe mid-run children’s homewest of the United States and life was hard, working as a private nanny Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a rich young widow few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and an eventful but emotional stint died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a premature baby wardheavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1783784350|amazonuktitle=<amazonuk>0007488440</amazonuk>This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter|rating=5|genre=History|summary=It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to 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 length and breadth of the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscape. She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the farm'' - and learned to spin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in her blood.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Derek Niemann1789017977|title=Birds in Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a CageNew Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry'Birds 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 Cage'' introduces while the reader family was quite well-to John -do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and his fellow officers: Peter Conder, George Waterston and John Henry Barrett and shows how their shared love of birds enabled them five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to create an emotional escape a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from the gruelling conditions that surrounded them in the prisoner of war camp at Warburg. The men banded together his father was his need to form a birdwatching society within the camp, making meticulous observations of the lives of the birds nesting in be well-turned-out and around the areathis would stay with him throughout his life. These detailed records went on to become valuable scientific documents, as they recorded He joined the lives and habits of birds army at eighteen in painstaking detail, revealing previously unknown facts about species such as the redstart and goldfinch1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720939</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick1980891117|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.