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[[Category:New Reviews|History]]==History==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mark Palmer1785633457|title=Made to lastCharging Around: The story Exploring the Edges of Britain's best-known shoe firmEngland by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=4.5|genre=Business and FinanceTravel|summary=From its founding Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the Quaker brothers Cyrus and James Clark in the Somerset village idea of Street, to its present-day status as a global shoe brand, exploring the name edges of Clark has weathered many a storm as it draws close to its bicentenaryEngland in an electric car was not totally outrageous. This account of the companyIn fact, by it should be a distant kinsman of the two original founderspleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, has drawn heavily on the archives and on in-depth interviews with the family to tell the full story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685206</amazonuk>shouldn't it?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emily CockayneB09BLBP3P8|title=Cheek by JowlNeville Chamberlain's War: A History of NeighboursHow Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager

|summary=As Emily Cockayne emphasises at Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the beginning early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the first chapter''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, almost everyone has a neighbour; if you have a neighbourwar breaking out, you are one yourself; and neighbours can enrich or ruin our livesChurchill coming in to save the day. In Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this engaging book, she takes various case studies and anecdotes it was of living side by side vital significance in Britain from around 1200 to how the present daywar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546949</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=Ian MortimerJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=The Time TravellerFritz and Kurt|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=We 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 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 light switch. But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's Guide will, and instead of having a national vote to Elizabethan Englandkeep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. ''Kristallnacht'' 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 sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…|isbn=024156574X}}{{Frontpage|author=John Henry Phillips|title=The Search

|summary=For many Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of usthe latter, as our author promises to locate the Elizabethan age which comprised almost half topic of the Tudor era seems bathed in sunlighttitular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the gilded era of Queen Elizabethtarget might not exist any more – oh, and it's 'sceptred isle'underwater, when he cannot dive. It was Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the period in which Gloriana presided over Sir Francis Drakeheroic old man's circumnavigation of the globevisit back to France, our author has promised to find the defeat of the Spanish Armadalanding craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the literary epoch vast majority of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser and Sidneywhom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099542072</amazonuk>1472146182

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn= B09F4CTKJR|title= Flights for Freedom|author=Tony Judt 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 Timothy Snyderthe 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.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0578761718|title=Thinking the Twentieth CenturyThe Inspiring History of a Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver

|summary=In emulating historians The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from his geographical area of interestat least 1181, Timothy Snyder poses questions towhen 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 discusses ideas withthen survived for centuries until World War II, when it was again ruined by bombs during the highly esteemed British historian and writer Tony Judt, best known for his 2005 Blitz. But that wasn''Postwar''. This collaboration t the end of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the older and stones from the younger thinker engenders the spoken book ''Thinking the Twentieth Century'church's walls were transported to Fulton, a rather intriguing exploration of said time periodMissouri. Each of its ten chapters begins with Judt’s narrative There, in the grounds of a specific point in his personal lifeWestminster College, the church was rebuilt and continues into debates of specific facets of history; today serves as a healthy mix of thematic and chronological approaches is used for the lattermemorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956355X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cathryn J Prince1784385166|title=Death The Third Reich in the Baltic100 Objects: The World War II Sinking A Material History of the Wilhelm GustloffNazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse|rating=45

|summary=There What is no pun intended the first image that comes to mind when I describe you think of the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the ship Third Reich''Wilhelm Gustloff'' as sterns fascist regime in all its iniquity. It just seems But some objects and images from looking at her hard and rigid lines that if time may be less familiar to you were . In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to design a ship that illustrate the Nazi party would use as an ideological tool, to take their favoured workers on pleasure cruises around period of the MediterraneanThird Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts. }}{{Frontpage|author=Lun Zhang, you would naturally end up with something that looked like her. However fate had it that within years she became a hospital shipAdrien Gombeaud, 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 wasn't much longer after that that she was stationed playing out – someone in the northern Polish port now known as Gdyniasecond half of their teens has other priorities, ready to help in a major evacuation you know. I certainly didn't know of thousands the weeks of desperate, starving protests and fevered people fleeing hunger strikes from the students before the advancing Soviet army. All they wanted to do was to avoid massacre and the perilous snowy overland route to get a few miles along birth of the coastTank Man image, but they werenI didn't to know that within hours of sailing how the ''Wilhelm Gustloff'' would be torpedoedarea had long been a venue for political protest, and many thousands would perish I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the near-frozen Baltic waterswhole season of protests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>023034156X</amazonuk>1684056993

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Frankopan0648684806|title=The First CrusadeClara Colby: The Call from the EastInternational Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=3.54|genre=HistoryBiography|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the now famous Council time she was just three-years-old but because of Clermont in November 1095some childhood ailment, Pope Urban II responded she wasn't allowed to calls sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of distress from school. She was the eastern Byzantine Empire by issuing only child in the dramatic call to arms that sparked the First Crusadehousehold and her childhood was glorious. But there are at least two sides to every story By contrast, especially her family had become pioneer farmers in history. Western histories the mid-west of the Crusades have concentrated on that Council United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the journeys of Crusaders across Europefamily. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: Peter Frankopan's 'The Call from she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the East' instead draws attention to Emperor Alexios I Komnenus eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and the plight of his Byzantine EmpireWisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555034</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher de Bellaigue1783784350|title=Patriot of PersiaThis Golden Fleece: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British CoupA Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter

|summary=A good historian will take a single important fact It was December and make good use of it Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to expound his general thesispeople she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. De Bellaigue demonstrates this masterfully when he states, 'Between 1876 The job frustrated her and 1915 a quarter of the world changed ownership, with a half a dozen European states taking the lion’s shareeven her knitting did not soothe her mind.' Persia, however, during this time January was judged going to be too poor to be worth occupying. It had, a time for instance, only a few miles of railway track. Secondly, Russia making changes and Britain both had schemes for control but their mutual animosity gave the Persians room for manoeuvre. The latter were skilled at playing each off against she decided that she would travel the other length and obtaining concessions. However, breadth of the conflict sharpened over the control of a critical resourceBritish Isles with occasional forays abroad, oil. This was controlled upon discovering and telling the outbreak story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the First World War by the major share held landscape. She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the Anglofarm'' -Persian Oil Company, later and learned to become BPspin, held by the Britishknit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. It This was Muhammad Mossadegh, one of the first liberals of the Middle East was determined that this resource beneath his native land had to belong to his own peoplein her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540487</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marc Morris1789017977|title=The Norman ConquestRonnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=When did Ronnie Williams was the Norman conquest son of England start Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and end? Ethel Wall. This generous panoramic history takes a wide sweep of almost the whole of the eleventh century 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 England1863, although as the title indicates, the focal point is that pivotal date of 1066but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. Morris begins his narrative at around the year 1000, For a time when while the Anglofamily was quite well-Saxon kingdoms were under threat from to-do but disaster struck in the Viking invasions from Alfred 1929 Depression and Ethelred the Unreadyfive-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. Having long been vulnerable to raids One thing he did inherit from Scandinavia, England then had his father was his need to contend be well-turned-out and this would stay with the same from Francehim throughout his life. The power struggles that followed the illness and death of He joined the childless Edward the Confessor (who had nominated William of Normandy as his preferred successor in 1051), the apparent seizure of the English throne by Harold Godwinson who then had himself crowned with remarkable haste, the invasion led by Harold’s brother Tostig and Harald Hardrada of Norway and the death of both the latter army at Stamford Bridge, are dealt with eighteen in painstaking detail1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537443</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jerry White1980891117|title=London G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the 18th centurylife of George Engleheart|author=John Webley

|summary=White has already written accounts of London Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in the 19th occupied Amsterdam during World War II and 20th centurieswas entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and this is seven thousand Jews were deported from the last in a planned trilogy. In 1700, according to an unnamed contemporary source, it was one of city during the ‘most Spacious, Populous, Rich, Beautifulwar years, Renowned but only five thousand survived and Noble Citys that we know of at Martin could not understand how this day could be allowed to happen in the World’a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. It was also Most people believed that the largest city in Europe. By occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the end of Germans might reach the century, it city were convinced that they would double in extent and populationsoon be pushed back, and become that the largest Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the universe. Carl Phillipp Moritz, a visitor from Germany in 1782, could climb St Paul's Cathedral and comment with amazement way that he found it impossible to ascertain where London began or endeddid, ‘or where the circumjacent villages began; far but initial protests melted away as the eye could reach, it seemed to be all one continued chain’organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847921809</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Catherine Fletcher1908745819|title=The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold StorySurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie|rating=45

|summary=Henry VIII’s protracted divorce from Catherine of AragonSometimes 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, often referred 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 as ‘The King’s Great Matter’hearing a book calling your name, has been described in detail many times beforerarely get it wrong. In this book on the subjectcase, the focus is on the role of Italian diplomat, Gregorio Casali, ‘our man in Rome’, as the hardback edition I was titledtold why. In The blurb speaks of the prefaceauthor considering ''an older, Ms Fletcher explains less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the average reader may be conversant with natural world, of those aspects of the basic facts of Henry poetic and his six wiveslyrical that are about style not form, but has probably never heard and substance most of Casaliall, who played a lengthy role in the proceedingsabout 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 fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554895</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pam Weaver0857058320|title=Bath Times Lord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Nursery RhymesAnne McLean (translator)

|genre=AutobiographyHistory|summary=In 1961, a young 16 year old girl called Pam Weaver embarks on a career path that will change her life. Fed up with the tedium of working on the broken biscuit counter at Woolworths, she decides to train for her NNEB. ''Bath Times and Nursery RhymesLord Of All the Dead'' sees Pam progress from is a shy and awkward teenager journey to a competent uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and caring nursery nursedeath. Reluctant to stay too long Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in any positionthe Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Pam tries her hand Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at a variety the centre of jobs, including her initial employment in a Council-run children’s home, working as a private nanny this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a rich young widow and an eventful but emotional stint in a premature baby wardhero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007488440</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Derek Niemann0008294011|title=Birds in How to Lose a CageCountry: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran

|summary=''Birds A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in a Cageyears to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question '' introduces Discuss the reader factors which led to John ...'' I agreed that she was right and his fellow officers: Peter Conder, George Waterston and John Henry Barrett and shows how their shared love of birds enabled them wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to create an emotional escape from the gruelling conditions . I think now that surrounded them I do know. We are in the prisoner danger of war camp at Warburg. The men banded together to form losing democracy and whilst it's a birdwatching society within the camp, making meticulous observations flawed system I can't think of the lives of the birds nesting in and around the area. These detailed records went on to become valuable scientific documentsa better one, particularly as they recorded the lives and habits of birds in painstaking detail, revealing previously unknown facts about species such 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as the redstart and goldfinchhen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720939</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick1788037812|title=The Untold History Fraternity of the United StatesEstranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=4.5

|summary=It's been said Originally passed in 1885, the law that history is 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 John Addington Symonds, as well as the victorsheterosexual Havelock Ellis. It would also be pertinent to add that Exploring the writing will always polish up margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the worthy parts whilst whilst finding a convenient carpet under which can be swept European Continent, but barely talked about in 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 UK, so the Irish potato famine from publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to 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 scientific understanding of British people would accept though that their country has had an imperialist past - homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and that equality, leading to the natives have not always thrown themselves down in front milestone legalisation of us same-sex relationships in their joy at our arrival1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091949297</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jacob F Field1910593508|title=One Bloody Thing After AnotherApollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins|rating=3.5

|summary=While other authors have made This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the case passion for mankind easing the subject drips off in the destruction stakes recentlyevery Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and becoming less hostileMike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of this, bloodthirsty and cruel than the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the past, it doesn’t mean that our global history is not littered with detail, about mutinies, massacres and murdersblanks. Mr Field here gathers the gamut of gore from the time when These shortcuts are the only people writing down their history were downside to the Chinese, up until book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the late nineteenth century, slight feeling that there are scenes missing and covers the planet in search of slicing, dicing that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and deathly devices. It certainly lives up to its titlestill felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843178842</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graeme Donald1786331047|title=When The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Earth Was FlatSecret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport|rating=45

|summary=Mankind has often had some quite ridiculous ideas. Once upon a time people deemed it sensible for doctors to go from an autopsy room to help give birth without washing hands in between – who'd have thought it might be beneficial? Those self-same medical scientists were within generations going to extol The basic facts about the virtues deaths of cocaine Nicholas and opium as harmless boosts to medicineAlexandra, and in the interim proudly induce enemas some of tobacco smoke – which were deliberately obscured at the early version of colonic irrigation so beloved of some dodgy ex-Princess-type peopletime for various reasons, have long since been established. Outside For the medical room, there was once last few months of their lives in Russia the notion that the Earth was flat – although not as might be popularly believedformer Tsar and Tsarina, a regular idea their children and few remaining servants were held in Columbus's daysincreasingly squalid, but certainly at times before thenhumiliating captivity. The spread of man's idiocy where wrongTo prevent them from being rescued, faulty in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and dodgy science is concernedbayoneted to death in circumstances which, and once the history of news was confirmed beyond all the false ideasdoubt, is touched on horrified their relatives in this fascinating volumeEurope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843178680</amazonuk>

{{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 Move on 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, [[Newest Home 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>}}Family Reviews]]