Difference between revisions of "Newest History Reviews"

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[[Category:History|*]]
 
[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]]
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[[Category:New Reviews|History]]__NOTOC__ <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1785633457
|title=Inventing the Enemy: Essays on Everything
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|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car
|author=Umberto Eco
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|author=Clive Wilkinson
|rating=4
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|rating=5
|genre=History
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|genre=Travel
|summary=Imagine a sumptuous Italian feast in the sunlit-bathed ancient countryside near Milan. Next to you a gentleman talks and eats with furious energy. He tells of Dante, Cicero, and St Augustine and quotes a multitude of obscure troubadours from the Middle Ages. He repeats himself, gestures flamboyantly, nudges you sharply in the ribs, belches and even breaks wind. His conversation contains nuggets of information but in the flow of his discourse there is a fondness for iteration and reiteration. He throws bones over his shoulder and when he reaches the cheese course - definitely too much information on the mouldy bacteria! When you finally get up things the elderly gentleman has said prompt your imagination. You are better informed, intrigued and prodded to examine his discourse again and again, even if only to challenge what you have heard. Such are the effects of reading Eco’s essays in ''Inventing the Enemy''.
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|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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553945</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=B09BLBP3P8
|title=The Crooked Timber Of Humanity
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|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940
|author=Isaiah Berlin
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|author=Frederic Seager
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=''The Crooked Timber of Humanity'' is a collection of essays by philosopher Isaiah Berlin, born in Riga, to, later in life, become an Oxford student and one of the institution's more notable alumni, continuing to influence the university by, among other things, cofounding Wolfson College. Altogether, the collection presents Berlin's observations of Western thought. The history of morals in the West was of particular interest to Berlin, as well as how these morals informed the more obvious changes in philosophy, literature, culture and much more.
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|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845952081</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=3756228711
 +
|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
 +
|author=Hans Bodmer
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre=History
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|summary=''The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''
  
{{newreview
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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.  
|title=A Very British Murder: the Story of a National Obsession
 
|author=Lucy Worsley
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=True Crime
 
|summary=The British are an illogical race.  Short of genocide, murder is the worst, most shocking crime an individual can commit, yet it has become a kind of commodity which over the last years has been endlessly packaged as a mass market entertainment industry.  We buy newspapers and magazines with blow-by-blow accounts of dreadful true life cases, we read thrillers, watch TV drama series and documentaries, and we can take part in murder mystery evenings and weekends at pubs and hotels.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849906343</amazonuk>
 
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene
|title=1912: The Year the World Discovered Antarctica
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|title=Fritz and Kurt
|author=Chris Turney
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=History
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=If you read those products designed to make you a published author, one way to start according to so many of them is to look ahead for a pertinent anniversary, research or know your subject well, and write well in advance and as popularly as you can on whatever the subject isMake no mistake, however – Chris Turney, even if he would appear to have followed that dictum to the last, is no chancer with the eye to the temporary relevance.
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|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 will, and instead of having a national vote to keep 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 JewsThese 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…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845952103</amazonuk>
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|isbn=024156574X
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=John Henry Phillips
|author=Mark White
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|title=The Search
|title=Kennedy: A Cultural History of an American Icon
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|rating=5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=During his lifetime John Fitzgerald Kennedy created an image of himself that dazzled  and which has largely remained intact despite the steady leakage of information over the years which could have been expected to tarnish. It could be argued that - much as in the case of Elvis Presley and Princess Diana - death was an excellent career move, but Mark White examines the way the image was built up, then maintained and - after the assassination - burnished, reinforced and protected.
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|summary=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 the latter, 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 wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a 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 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 vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441161864</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1472146182
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn= B09F4CTKJR
|title=Armchair Nation: An intimate history of Britain in front of the TV
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|title= Flights for Freedom
|author=Joe Moran
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|author= Steven Burgauer
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
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|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=All of us have a love-hate affair with television, or ‘the idiot lantern’.  Hardly anybody who has ever owned a set, or been part of a family which has had one, can envisage life without it.  It has been a source of endless entertainment and escape from the drudge of everyday life, while at some time it has irritated most of us beyond measure. Love it or loathe it, it has always been part of the fabric of our existence. While to a certain extent it has been superseded by online services which have supplemented if not overtaken or usurped part of its role, its iconic status is unlikely to disappear for the foreseeable future.
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|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683912</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0578761718
|title=Anti-Judaism: A History of a Way of Thinking
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|title=The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship
|author=David Nirenberg
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|author=Nancy Carver
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Initially the choice of title seemed an odd one on account of the more widely used term, anti-Semitism. The distinction is quickly made though, that unlike the latter, anti-Judaism does not need real Jews to flourish, but is fuelled by an idea alone. In fact this is a core tenet of Nirenberg’s thesis. Throughout history the idea of ‘Judaism’ is raised as an existential spectre in societies where there may be no Jewish members at all. This is a chilling reality, and Nirenberg charts the course of how this came to be.  
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|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781851131</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1784385166
|title=Victoria's Madmen: Revolution and Alienation
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|title=The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany
|author=Clive Bloom
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|author=Roger Moorhouse
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=Despite the revisionist work of a few writers and historians, our prevailing image of the Victorian age has generally been one of staid conformity, superiority and stuffiness, during which only a few dissenters put their heads above the parapet.  Clive Bloom sums it up rather succinctly on the first page as a ‘monolith of steam and class conflict, antimacassars and aspidistras’.  A page later, he describes the nineteenth century – most of which was covered by the Victorian era – as one divided by three groups, namely those who represented the old Georgian decadence, the young Turks eager for reform, and finally a group who felt an allegiance to the world of their forebears but were forced to exist in a world of confirming moralism and priggishness.  The young Turks, he concludes, ultimately won.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230313825</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Inferno Decoded: The essential companion to the myths, mysteries and locations of Dan Brown's Inferno
 
|author=Michael Haag
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|summary=Here be spoilers.  Not so much in my review, but certainly in its subject, a very quickly produced companion guide to the latest [[:Category:Dan Brown|Dan Brown]] blockbuster.  It's not so much a page-by-page guide, but certainly serves as an educational and intelligent look at the background to the biggest-selling book of 2013.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251800</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Black Count: Glory, revolution, betrayal and the real Count of Monte Cristo
 
|author=Tom Reiss
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=While the novels of Alexandre Dumas, like ''The Three Musketeers'' and ''The Count of Monte Cristo'', weren't true, they were based on a real hero - Dumas's own father. Born the son of a slave and a French nobleman, General Alexandre Dumas would go on to rise to fame and fortune during the French Revolution, only to face racism, betrayal, and a rivalry with Napoleon Bonaparte which would eventually lead to the virtual disappearance from history of this incredible figure.
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|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 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 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. 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575132</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)
|title=Tutankhamen's Curse: The Developing History of an Egyptian King
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|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
|author=Joyce Tyldesley
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=The striking cover of 'Tutankhamen’s Curse' certainly has a way of arresting the reader’s attention. The iconic golden funeral mask peers out from an ink-black background and those heavily-lined Egyptian eyes seem to stare eerily into the soul of the beholder.
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|summary=I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know.  I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and 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 whole season of protests back in 1989.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861971664</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1684056993
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=0648684806
 +
|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist
 +
|author=John Holliday
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre=Biography
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|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA.  At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to 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 school.  She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family.  Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived.  As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1783784350
|title=A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa
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|title=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History
|author=A T Williams
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|author=Esther Rutter
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Almost ten years ago on a Sunday morning back in September 2003, British Troops raided a hotel in Basra. It was a difficult period in the occupation, six months on from the U.S. led invasion. Temperatures were more than 50 degrees centigrade. Members of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment (QLR) took ten suspects in for questioning from a hotel in the vicinity of insurgent weaponry. The Iraqis were hooded, plasticuffed, forced into stress positions and subjected to karate chops and kidney punches by the British. Other men and officers watched, walked by or wondered at the stench that resulted from vicious punishment. After 36 hours of torture, a 26 year-old hotel receptionist lay dead by asphyxiation. His grossly disfigured body bore 93 individual injuries. There are now in the region of another 250 individuals, men and women, whose families are making legal claims to have been killed in further encounters with British patrols or prison guards.
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|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575116</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1789017977
|title=The Shadow King: The Bizarre Afterlife of King Tut's Mummy
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|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II
|author=Jo Marchant
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|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=''Now, if I'd known''<br>
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|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'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.
''They'd line up just to see him,''<br>
 
''I'd taken all my money''<br>
 
''And bought me a museum.''
 
 
 
These lyrics, taken from a popular Steve Martin song, perfectly epitomize a phenomenon first described in the New York Times, February 1923. The craze came to be known as ''Tut-Mania'' and even now, ninety years later, there is something about the boy-king with the golden mask that ignites the imagination and curiosity of each subsequent generation.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306821338</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1980891117
|title=The Last Battle
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|title=G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart
|author=Stephen Harding
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|author=John Webley
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Art
|summary=May 4, 1945 saw the unconditional surrender of all German troops in Germany in Northwest Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Bavaria. Berlin had surrendered two days earlier. A few more areas remained officially at war, but even the most diehard supporter must have realised Germany had fallen. The war was over, to most soldiers, although VE day would be delayed for a few more days. But the most implausible battle of the second world war was about to begin. Had ''The Last Battle'' been fiction, I would have scoffed at the unlikely alliance featured in this book as too unbelievable.  A final battle played out in isolated Austrian castle was to rescue French VIPs held as honour prisoners. They were to be protected by the oddest ensemble of soldiers ever known. A ranking member of the S.S., a decorated Wehrmacht officer and his troops, the Austrian resistance and a few American soldiers against a suicidal S.S. troop bent on carrying as many killings as possible before the inevitable end.
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|summary=George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306822083</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1789016304
|title=The Riddle of the Labyrinth
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|title=War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam
|author=Margalit Fox
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|author=Melanie Martin
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Meet Linear B.  It's the name given to an ancient writing system discovered in 1900, and has stuck ever since then.  If you need to know more, it's a linear style of writing, and is linked to Linear AThere, that's that cleared up.  But it took an awful long time to clear anything more up – while people knew some things about Linear B, and why and how they got to be holding it in their hands, the actual language it contained, and its meaning, was a truly intellectual challenge.  It was five whole decades of obscurity, annoyingly secretive archaeologists and more, between Sir Arthur Evans finding Linear B on copious clay tablets on Crete, and its interpretation.  In between those two landmarks was an unsung American heroine, and this book is both an incredibly readable guide to everything regarding Linear B, and a study of her contribution.
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|summary=Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war 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 occupationMost people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect.  It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251320</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1908745819
|author=Jonathan Dimbleby
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|title=Surfacing
|title=Destiny in the Desert: The Road to El Alamein - the Battle that Turned the Tide
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|author=Kathleen Jamie
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=El Alamein is a totemic British battle, standing as it does with others which turned the tide of our fortunes.  The Allies were still smarting from the effects of Dunkirk and harbouring the knowledge that had Hitler elected to press his advantage then the situation could have been very differentChurchill is often quoted as saying that there were no victories before El Alamein and no defeats afterwardsThis isn't true - 'it seemed that' is generally omitted from the beginning of the quote - but it does sum up the fact that the battle turned the tide of ''perception'' as well as the fortunes of war, which was quite an achievement for fighting which took place on land to which none of the major participants had any legitimate claim.
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|summary=Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why.  The blurb speaks of the author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I amAdd to that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it.  It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually.  I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684455</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0857058320
|title=Ruta's Closet
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|title=Lord Of All the Dead
|author=Keith Morgan with Ruth Kron Sigal
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|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=A Holocaust memoir.  There, I've said it, and in one fell swoop I've consigned this book to a niche market, and a small – and very much over-supplied – audience.  Such books do find it difficult to get their heads above the parapet and the voice within heard, and it seems they have slowly filled in all the gaps in the available knowledge about the Holocaust. But that's the point that makes those words sound churlish – every life that survived that nightmare has to fill in a gap, and account for those who committed the crimes and those that helped out and rescued a survivor, and serve as monument to those six million gaps it created.  Luckily, mostly on account of location, this book certainly does serve to fill in a wider gap in our perception of WWII than most.
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|summary=''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, 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 the centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906509263</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0008294011
|title=The Double Cross System
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|title=How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
|author=J C Masterman
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|author=Ece Temelkuran
|rating=5
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=This ''Vintage'' re-issue of Masterman's account of the work of the Twenty Committee is subtitled the 'classic account of World War Two Spy-Masters'.  That's a somewhat misleading tease.  The book isn't really about the spy-masters, very little information is given about those recruiting, turning, running and protecting the spies.  More information - but again relatively little - is given about the spies themselves.
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|summary=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 factors which led to...'' 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.  I think now that I do knowWe are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578239</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1788037812
|author=Chris West
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|title=The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908
|title=First Class: A History of Britain in 36 Postage Stamps
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|author=Brian Anderson
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=As a philatelist and lover of history, I approached this book with even more curiosity than usual.  The subtitle suggested a very intriguing approach, but would it work?  I’m glad to report that it did.
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|summary=Originally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224095463</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Gavin Mortimer
 
|title=A History of Cricket in 100 Objects
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Sport
 
|summary=[[A History of Football in 100 Objects by Gavin Mortimer|A History of Football in 100 Objects]] was a brave attempt, but was slightly let down by being a little too clinical.  Being a game imbued with passion, the book lacked this which took some of the edge off it.  Cricket, whilst inspiring passion amongst devotees, has a slightly more laid back following; one that may work better in this format.  That said, being a game that has been played for five centuries, narrowing it down to just 100 objects is no less an undertaking than for football.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689406</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Polly Morland
 
|title=The Society of Timid Souls: Or, How to be Brave
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Reference
 
|summary='I see no reason why the shy and timid in any community couldn’t get together and help each other.'
 
 
 
The above words were uttered in 1943 by a gentleman called Bernard Gabriel. Mr Gabriel was a piano player who founded a unique club, ''The Society of Timid Souls'' that encouraged timid performers and fear-wracked musicians to come in out of the cold 'to play, to criticise and be criticised in order to conquer that old bogey of stage fright.' The method evidently worked, as many a timid soul claimed to be cured by these unorthodox methods and club membership grew considerably in the years that followed.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251908</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Paul Strathern
 
|title=The Spirit of Venice: From Marco Polo to Casanova
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=There are several ways of telling the history of the republic of Venice, which is generally regarded as the first great economic and naval power of the western world. Strathern has chosen to do so largely through the lives of various famous (and also infamous) people from Marco Polo in the late thirteenth century to what he calls its destruction, 'both political and symbolic', at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797.  On the whole, the major events such as its wars are covered fairly briefly.  An exception, fittingly enough, is made in the case of a chapter on the war which began its decline in the fifteenth century, when it tried to hold Thessalonica against the Ottomans, and sent ships to help defend Constantinople against the Turkish army but found itself heavily defeated in the subsequent lengthy war, as a result of which it lost most of its possessions.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951921</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1910593508
|author=Peter Hart
+
|title=Apollo
|title=The Great War
+
|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=There are certain aspects of world history that we are duty-bound to teach to each generation. World War I was called 'The Great War' for a reason; it changed the world scene irrevocably and is regarded as the single most important event of the twentieth century. The war introduced dreadful new weapons designed to slaughter as many people as possible with maximum efficiency, resulting in tens of millions of deaths.
+
|summary=This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the 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 authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to the book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the slight 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>1846682460</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1786331047
|author=Mark Palmer
+
|title=The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family
|title=Made to last: The story of Britain's best-known shoe firm
+
|author=Helen Rappaport
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Business and Finance
 
|summary=From its founding by the Quaker brothers Cyrus and James Clark in the Somerset village of Street, to its present-day status as a global shoe brand, the name of Clark has weathered many a storm as it draws close to its bicentenary.  This account of the company, by a distant kinsman of the two original founders, has drawn heavily on the archives and on in-depth interviews with the family to tell the full story.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685206</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Emily Cockayne
 
|title=Cheek by Jowl: A History of Neighbours
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=As Emily Cockayne emphasises at the beginning of the first chapter, almost everyone has a neighbour; if you have a neighbour, you are one yourself; and neighbours can enrich or ruin our lives.  In this engaging book, she takes various case studies and anecdotes of living side by side in Britain from around 1200 to the present day.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546949</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ian Mortimer
 
|title=The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=For many of us, the Elizabethan age which comprised almost half of the Tudor era seems bathed in sunlight, the gilded era of Queen Elizabeth's 'sceptred isle'.  It was the period in which Gloriana presided over Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the globe, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the literary epoch of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser and Sidney.
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542072</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder
 
|title=Thinking the Twentieth Century
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=In emulating historians from his geographical area of interest, Timothy Snyder poses questions to, and discusses ideas with, the highly esteemed British historian and writer Tony Judt, best known for his 2005 ''Postwar''. This collaboration of the older and the younger thinker engenders the spoken book ''Thinking the Twentieth Century'', a rather intriguing exploration of said time period. Each of its ten chapters begins with Judt’s narrative of a specific point in his personal life, and continues into debates of specific facets of history; a healthy mix of thematic and chronological approaches is used for the latter.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956355X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Home and Family Reviews]]
|author=Cathryn J Prince
 
|title=Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=There is no pun intended when I describe the ship ''Wilhelm Gustloff'' as stern.  It just seems from looking at her hard and rigid lines that if you were to design a ship that the Nazi party would use as an ideological tool, to take their favoured workers on pleasure cruises around the Mediterranean, you would naturally end up with something that looked like her.  However fate had it that within years she became a hospital ship, and it wasn't much longer after that that she was stationed in the northern Polish port now known as Gdynia, ready to help in a major evacuation of thousands of desperate, starving and fevered people fleeing the advancing Soviet army.  All they wanted to do was to avoid the perilous snowy overland route to get a few miles along the coast, but they weren't to know that within hours of sailing the ''Wilhelm Gustloff'' would be torpedoed, and many thousands would perish in the near-frozen Baltic waters.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023034156X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 12:03, 20 March 2023

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Review of

Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car by Clive Wilkinson

5star.jpg Travel

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? Full Review

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Review of

Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940 by Frederic Seager

4.5star.jpg History

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. Full Review

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Review of

CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena' by Hans Bodmer

4star.jpg History

The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.

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. Full Review

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Review of

Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene

4star.jpg Confident Readers

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 will, and instead of having a national vote to keep 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… Full Review

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Review of

The Search by John Henry Phillips

5star.jpg History

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 the latter, 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 wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a 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 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 vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties? Full Review

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Review of

Flights for Freedom by Steven Burgauer

4.5star.jpg Historical Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship by Nancy Carver

4.5star.jpg History

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. Full Review

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Review of

The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany by Roger Moorhouse

5star.jpg History

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 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 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.  Full Review

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Review of

Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes by Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)

4.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know. I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and 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 whole season of protests back in 1989. Full Review

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Review of

Clara Colby: The International Suffragist by John Holliday

4star.jpg Biography

The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to 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 school. She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening. Full Review

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Review of

This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History by Esther Rutter

5star.jpg History

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. Full Review

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Review of

Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II by Wendy Williams

4star.jpg History

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'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. Full Review

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Review of

G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart by John Webley

4.5star.jpg Art

George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book. Full Review

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Review of

War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam by Melanie Martin

5star.jpg History

Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in The Diary of Ann Frank but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war 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 occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies. Full Review

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Review of

Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie

5star.jpg History

Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you this one has your name on it. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of the 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 the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly. Full Review

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Review of

Lord Of All the Dead by Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

4star.jpg History

Lord Of All the Dead is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, 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 the centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side. Full Review

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Review of

How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship by Ece Temelkuran

4.5star.jpg History

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 factors which led to... 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. I think now that I do know. We are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth. Full Review

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Review of

The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908 by Brian Anderson

5star.jpg History

Originally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967. Full Review

1910593508.jpg

Review of

Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins

5star.jpg History

This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the 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 authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to the book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the slight 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. Full Review

1786331047.jpg

Review of

The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family by Helen Rappaport

5star.jpg History

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. Full Review

Move on to Newest Home and Family Reviews