Open main menu

Changes

6,800 bytes removed ,  12:03, 20 March 2023
no edit summary
[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=The Last Days of DetroitCharging Around: Motor Cars, Motown and Exploring the Collapse Edges of an Industrial GiantEngland by Electric Car|author=Mark BinelliClive Wilkinson|rating=45|genre=HistoryTravel|summary=Moving back to Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his native Detroit, Mark Binelli tries to see where it all went wrong for a city which eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was once ''America's capitalist dream town'' but has shrunk more significantly than anywhere else in the country over recent yearsnot totally outrageous. How did this happenIn fact, and what effect has it had on the residents there? Is the decline irreversible, or can those who want to bring about should be a changed pleasant holiday for Clive and improved Detroit succeedhis wife, Joan, shouldn't it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553880</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B09BLBP3P8|title=Penny Loaves and Butter CheapNeville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain in 1846Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Stephen BatesFrederic Seager
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Until I picked up this bookReceived 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, I would never have really thought of 1846 known as a pivotal year the ''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in British historyto save the day. Stephen Bates has proved convincingly Very little time is spent on this period in these pages that if cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was not exactly a watershed one, it nevertheless marked an era of changevital significance in how the war played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781852545</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=3756228711
|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
|author=Hans Bodmer
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=''The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''
{{newreview|title=Books Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that Changed the World: The 50 Most Influential Books in Human History|author=Andrew Taylor|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Oh the pleasure when, as a book reviewer, one can simply point He has chosen to tell us about the title and say – 'yupshort, that'. Orbut explosive, I suppose, as in history of the non-existent follow-upControl Data Company, Adverts That Changed the WorldCDC, simply repeat the mantra 'it does exactly what it says on the tin'for whom he worked. This paperback edition of the six year old original, fresh with several typos they had time to iron out alongside putting in Seamus HeaneyIt's departure, makes life even easier, given that subtitle. I'm sure the more bibliophilic are already solda fascinating tale, told in a mixture of technological summary and there is little influence I can bear on things. I will, however, soldier onwry anecdote.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782069429</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Letters to the Midwife: Correspondence with the author of ''Call the Midwife''Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|authortitle=Jennifer WorthFritz and Kurt
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=[[:Category:Jennifer Worth|Jennifer Worth]]We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, author of doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the bestselling ''Call empty market place, helping the Midwife''neighbours, sadly passed away in May 2011 following being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a short illnessvocational school. Her books have gained a great deal of popularity in recent years with Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their mixture of warmth, sadness very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and humour based on her experiences working workmanlike as a midwife in light switch. But this is the time just before the East End Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of Londonhaving a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. ''Letters to the MidwifeKristallnacht'' features some happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the treasured letters received by Worth from former work colleagues younger Kurt at home with his mother and fans sisters anxious to hear word of her books. The resulting book is a rich testament an evacuation to a life lived fully Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to a very special lady whose memories have managed each other, packed off on the same train to inspire Buchenwald and touch so manythe stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297869086</amazonuk>024156574X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert A CaroJohn Henry Phillips|title=The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=It's only a matter of days since I finished listening to [[The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert A Caro|The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power]], the first part of Robert A Caro's definitive work on the President and despite having just spent over forty hours on the book I wanted to learn more. I was torn though - the second book in a series is not often as good as the first and it struck me that these might not be the most exciting years in Johnson's life. Was this book going to be the link which took us on to the more exciting times? Not a bit of it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00GSHD0U6</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert A Caro|title=The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to PowerSearch
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Lyndon Baines Johnson was the 36th President of the United States, preceded by John F Kennedy and succeeded by Richard Nixon, with both being remembered most for the way they left office. His five-year term in office was overshadowed at the start by the Kennedy assassination and increasingly blighted by the debacle which was Vietnam, but there was something about Johnson which always intrigued me: how does a poor boy from Texas hill country without an exceptional (or even 'good') education become president of the United States? 'The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power' tells you all that you need to know.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00GSHTJZQ</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|title=London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing
|author=Travis Elborough
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=The concept of people from overseas countries buying and owning old and long-established British industries and works of art is 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 newalways confident what. Yet one Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the most unusual sales latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of this kind occurred in March 1968the titular search. It was And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a time of British economic crisis (where wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when have we heard 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 before) and the ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaigndelivered him to Normandy, and a time when the concept of heritage that he was unfashionable and the authorities seemed lucky to attach more value survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to modernity than erect a memorial to relics everyone else aboard, the vast majority of the Regency and the Victorian agewhom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565765</amazonuk>1472146182
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn= B09F4CTKJR|title=Born in SiberiaFlights for Freedom|author=Tamara Astafieva, Michael Darlow and Debbie SlaterSteven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyHistorical Fiction|summary=I tend to shy away from reviewing book titles, but this time it seems appropriate – here itIt's a title that doesn't tell you the half later stages of World War I and the storyUnited States has just entered the conflict. As much as Tamara Astafieva was born in Siberia, and returned there several times, for many different reasons and with many very different outcomes, this Petrol Petronus is much more of a picture of young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the Soviet Union as we first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Britain think of it – Moscow, a bit of Saint PetersburgCanada, the first to be attached to the RAF and little else. That's not a fault – and again it's not half of the storyfirst to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. The story here is so complexBut before that can happen, so rich with detail and incident, and itself came about in such an unusual way, that any summary of Petrol has to master flying the book has its work cut out in defining its many qualitiesnotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373343</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0578761718|title=Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!: A World without World War IThe Inspiring History of a Special Relationship|author=Richard Ned LebowNancy Carver
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=On The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the first page City of this bookLondon from at least 1181, we are given a summary of events from August 2014when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, Queen Elizabeth is hosting a reception for Prince Harry and his bride, a niece of the German Kaiser at Balmoral, while original church was destroyed in the governor-general Great Fire of India is involved London in preparations for the next Commonwealth Games1666. This brief glimpse of It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a fantasy world is followed design by a swift resumé of Sir Christopher Wren soon after the twentieth centuryfire and then survived for centuries until World War II, as everything actually happened, and of changes in when it was again ruined by bombs during the world order wrought by both world warsBlitz. Chapter two tells of But that wasn't the assassination end of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie at Sarajevo in June 1914its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the final catalyst which precipitated stones from the First World War.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1137278536</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Hundred Days|author=Nick Lloyd|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Nick Lloyd is a historianchurch's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. WellThere, actually he's a lecturer in ''Defence Studies'' at Kings the grounds of Westminster College London - based at , the Joint Services Command church was rebuilt and Staff College in Shrivenham, Wiltshiretoday serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670920061</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1784385166|title=Hanns and RudolfThe Third Reich in 100 Objects: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant A Material History of AuschwitzNazi Germany|author=Thomas HardingRoger Moorhouse
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This dual biography concerns, as the title makes clear, two men. One was from an inherently German, rich Jewish family – they had a powerboat so he could waterski on the lake at their country cottage – who fled the rise of the Nazis early in the 1930s, and got away moderately lightly, only losing properties and a large and successful medical career. The other was from an inherently German family, who signed up for First World War service before his age, but only really wanted to be a farmer and family man, yet who ended up running probably history's worst slaughterhouse. Both had a connection and a shared destiny that was largely unknown before this book was researched, there's a chance that both of them had the blood of one man and only one man directly on their hands from WWII service, and both of them – again, as the title makes clear – are given the dignity of the familiar, first name throughout this incredible book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434022365</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|title=Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs
|author=Bob Brier
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=There have been so many books written on What is the subject first image that comes to mind when you think of Egyptology, it would be hard to imagine that anything new could be said on the matter. However, TV presenter and researcher Bob Brier, a self-confessed Egyptophile, has managed Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to approach the topic from a unique perspective by allowing us a glimpse concentration camp? None of his fascinating collection these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich's fascist regime in all things Egyptianits iniquity. The collection is an eclectic mix of But some objects, including jewellery, private letters and images from Howard Carter, tobacco packaging, books, posters and tea-setsthat time may be less familiar to you. In Brier’s collectionthis short volume, his ornate Josiah Wedgwood Egyptian set sits proudly on Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the shelf next to Barbie period of the Nile and a cheap King Tut cologne bottle. As he puts it: 'we all know that something can be so bad that it’s good. The true collector has no shameThird Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1137278609</amazonuk> 
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Fred's WarLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|authortitle=Andrew DavidsonTiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes|rating=34.5|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=''Fred's War'' is I never really followed the story events of the 1st Cameronians actions Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the 1st world war from 1914 -1915. The pictures themselves tell second half of their own storyteens has other priorities, you know. They show I certainly didn't know of the happy young weeks of protests and carefree faces become gaunt, lined hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and battle-worn as the war progresses, although there is still laughter at times. The simple warmth birth of a roaring fire brings such obvious pleasurethe Tank Man image, that in a way the joy itself is heart-breaking. Photos like this make one wonder however they ever coined the name I didn''The Great War''. This looks anything but great. It shows t know how the desolation of ploughed fields which should have area had long been planted to provide nourishmenta venue for political protest, instead yielding only a harvest of death and despair. It shows men wading in water nearly to their knees or scurrying like animals in the muck. The pictures show the true horror of trench warfare in I didn't know more than a way words can not, but thankfully they show only spit about the lulls between battles. There are no scenes of horror as men are blown to bits. I think the men of this time had too much respect to photograph comrades in the throes of death, or in agony with woundspeople involved on either side. This book is not the horror of the battlefield or the immediate aftermath, but instead of mind-numbing cold, hunger and filth - of living conditions so bleak death itself might not seem such practically flawless in giving a bad option. But it isngeneral browser't all doom and gloom. There are happier scenes as Fred is an officer and billeted comfortably at times. There is also s context for the delight whole season of a death narrowly missed and simple scenes of camaraderieprotests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780721811</amazonuk>1684056993
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0648684806|title=WinterClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=Adam GopnikJohn Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=ReferenceBiography|summary=In this collection The path of five essays, each one offering a unique and fascinating perspective on Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the season time she was just three-years-old but because of wintersome childhood ailment, Adam Gopnik takes the reader on a captivating journeyshe wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, exploring historyshe remained with her grandparents, art who doted on her and societysaw that she received a good education, through ''Romantic Winter'', ''Radical Winter'', ''Recuperative Winter'', ''Recreational Winter'' both in and ''Remembering Winter''out of school. In each essay, Gopnik focuses on one or two central themes, whilst also touching on surrounding ideas She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. For example By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in Romantic Winter his central topics are art the mid-west of the United States and poetry, howeverlife was hard, issues such as changing societyClara 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, technologyhad ten pregnancies, sex seven surviving children and culture are also explored, died in relation to these pivotal notionschildbirth not long after Clara arrived. He also includes two sections featuring collections of artwork to illustrate his viewpoints As the eldest girl, which add a charming, individual touch to this bookheavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780874472</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Mayo1783784350|title=The Assassination of JFK Minute by MinuteThis Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter|rating=45
|genre=History
|summary=President John F Kennedy had been warned about going It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to Dallas - he himself people she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. referred January was going to it as 'nut country' - but, conscious be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of the upcoming 1964 presidential electionsBritish Isles with occasional forays abroad, he needed to bring some support from discovering and telling the city onside story of wool's history and that was why he how it had made and changed the First Lady found themselves in the motorcade which swept into Dealey Plaza on 22 November 1963landscape. There can be few people who are not aware of what happened next, but Jonathan Mayo has presented She'd grown up on a chronology of events over the next four days (sheep farm in Suffolk - ''four days, three murders, hundreds of storiesa free-range child on the farm''- and learned to spin, as the cover says) demonstrating the pressure under which the officials involved were working knit and weave from her mother and the dreadful impact of what happenedher mother's friend. This was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780721854</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David G Coleman1789017977|title=The Fourteenth DayRonnie and Hilda's Romance: JFK and the Aftermath of the Cuban Missile CrisisTowards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=The commonly-held view Ronnie Williams was the son of history would 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 us believe that the Cuban Missile Crisis began been born in mid-October 1962 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and concluded on 28 October, with the world heaving he might well have shaved a collective sigh of relief and moving on to think of other thingsfew years off his age. The truth is, of course, rather different and For a while the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the crisis rumbled on for weeks 1929 Depression and months five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to come, occasionally almost bubbling a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to the boil again as Kennedy be well-turned-out and Krushchev fenced this would stay with each otherhim throughout his life. Historian David G Coleman has used He joined the secret White House recordings to take us into the Oval Office and listen to what really went onarmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393346803</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1980891117|title=The War that Ended PeaceG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: How Europe abandoned peace for A year in the First World Warlife of George Engleheart|author=Margaret MacMillanJohn Webley
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryArt|summary=One could argue that George Engleheart was one of the main title leading portrait miniaturists of this book is slightly questionable. Throughout Georgian London, with a career lasting from the half-century or so before 1770s to the outbreak Regency era. He was also one of hostilities in 1914the most prolific, Europe had rarely been free from conflictpainting nearly 5, with the Franco-Prussian, Graeco-Turkish and Balkan wars for a start000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Nevertheless, Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the majority names of the continent was at peace with itself each of his clients, and most of its neighbours during this periodsubsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668272X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Vincent Bugliosi1789016304|title=ParklandWar and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=''Parkland'' is not just a book Melanie Martin read about history but a book ''with'' a history. Vincent Bugliosi published what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''Reclaiming History: The Assassination Diary of President John F. KennedyAnn Frank''but then realised that her own family' in 2007 with much of the book being based on his preparation for a mock trial of Lee Harvey Oswald which was shown on British televisions stories were equally fascinating. This book was an exhaustive look at what happened in Dallas A hundred and at subsequent events such as seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the trial of Jack Ruby war years, but only five thousand survived and the conspiracy theories which have abounded Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in the intervening fifty yearsa country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. ''Four Days in NovemberMost people believed that the occupation could never happen: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy'' was published in June 2008 and is - as even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the title suggests - restricted to Amsterdammers would never allow what happened on 22 November 1963 and to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the following three daysorganisers became more circumspect. It''Parkland'' is the film tie-in version s an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of that bookindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393347338</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreview|author=Stephen Jin-Nom Lee and Howard Webster|title=Canton Elegy: A Father's Letter of Sacrifice, Survival and Love|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Stephen Jin-Nom Lee, known in his childhood as Ah Nom, was born early in the twentieth century in the village of Dai Waan in rural China. His father died when he was young and he lived with his grandmother, mother and 'Little Uncle', who was only a matter of months older than Ah Nom. They'd become friends as they grew older, but when his Grandfather returned after a long absence in America there as a distinct rivalry between the two. Then Grandfather revealed his reason for returning home - he intended to take the boys to America to be educated. It was a wonderful opportunity and Ah Nom left the village and his mother not knowing when he would see either again.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780285736</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Max Adams|title=The King in the North: The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Born in 604 and around for only 38 years, Oswald didn't live that long but he packed a lot in. Born into Bernician royalty, Oswald the teenager had to flee with his mother and siblings when his father Aelfrith was killed at the Battle of the River Idle. Any noble wanting to beat his way to the top would naturally kill Oswald's family and so an obscure upbringing in Ireland seemed the answer. However, Oswald grows strong and bides his time until he comes home and clears his own path, ruling Northumbria for 8 years until his own untimely demise. During those 8 years he united kingdoms, helped establish Christianity and became the inspiration of writers as disparate as St Bede and Tolkien. As Oswald became St Oswald he left behind as many legends as historical events and this book seeks to separate the man from the myth while explaining the time we call the Dark Ages in the brutally separated lands that we now call Great Britain and Ireland.Frontpage|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781854181</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1908745819|title=Empress Dowager CixiSurfacing|author=Jung ChangKathleen Jamie
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=It’s easy to see why Jung Chang selected Cixi as the focal point for her study of China’s tumultuous modern history. Cixi is a truly fascinating woman, one of few human beings whose existence can be honestly said to have shaped the course of history. Cixi’s biography is not only a fascinating read due to her own political machinations, but also because of the immense transformations that occurred in China during her lifetime. Jung Chang offers a detailed exploration of the period from Cixi’s entrance to court in 1852 to her death in 1908, during which time the ancient dynastic customs of China gave way to the advent of the industrial age.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087436</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|title=The Explorer Gene
|author=Tom Cheshire
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''The Explorer Genethis one has your name on it'' relates the remarkable story of three generations of the Piccard family. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, each of whom managed to push but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the boundaries of travel and break new frontiersbook. That's a rare experience. The grandfather, Auguste Piccard was the first human People who are sensitive to enter the stratospherehearing a book calling your name, using en experimental balloon of his own inventionrarely get it wrong. His later workIn this case, designing submarines, enabled his son Jacques to become the first person to descend to the bottom I was told why. The blurb speaks of the infamous Mariana trenchauthor considering ''an older, setting less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a world record for the deepest divebad description of where I am. Grandson Bertrand became the first person Add to fly around that my love of the natural world in a balloon , of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and now seeks to break new records by means substance most of a solar-powered craft that he intends to pilot all the , about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way around the earthto me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720890</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold0857058320|title=Tudor Monastery Farm: Life in rural England 500 years agoLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Think of it as time travel. Three professional historians have travelled back some five hundred years to put what they've learned into practice. On a monastery farm they've experienced what it was really like in rural Tudor England. ItLord Of All the Dead''s is a book journey to accompany uncover the BBC television series but itauthor's lost ancestor's still a rich life and rewarding experience if - like me - you missed death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the showSpanish Civil War. ThereManuel Mena, Cercas's a wealth of experience between great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the three authors and they write about what they each know best and itbook. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's all supplemented by some sumptuous photographs forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the centre of Bayleaf Farm in west Sussex and this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the surrounding farmlandwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849906920</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008294011|title=High MindsHow to Lose a Country: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Simon HefferEce Temelkuran
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Between 1840 and 1880 British life and society underwent A little while ago a gradual but major changefriend 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... '' Young adults in the latter year would have seen I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a very different country from good or bad thing that in which an earlier generation came we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to maturity. The land I think now that I do know. We are in which poverty, disease, squalor danger of losing democracy and injustice were endemicwhilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, and in which particularly as the Chartists had agitated for fairer rights for all, had been largely transformed by the modernising factors of social upheaval and industrial change'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847946771</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anthony Summers1788037812|title=Not In Your LifetimeThe Fraternity of the Estranged: The Assassination of JFKFight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=4.5|genre=True CrimeHistory|summary=Originally published as ''The Kennedy Conspiracy''passed in 1885, Anthony Summers has massively revised the textlaw 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, updated it with three books on the latest evidence nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and it's been republished John Addington Symonds, as ''Not in Your Lifetime: The Assassination well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of JFK'' which refers to the statement made by Chief Justice Earl Warren who society and studying homosexuality was asked if common on the truth European Continent, but barely talked about what happened would come out. He said that it wouldin the UK, but added so the rider that ''it might not be in your lifetime''. Fifty years on most publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the people directly involved are now deadscientific understanding of homosexuality, but and beginning the truth has not officially emerged. In factstruggle for recognition and equality, it's difficult leading to avoid the thought that the US government would prefer that it did not see the light milestone legalisation of day. Further documents are due to be released same-sex relationships in 2017, but, in the meantime Anthony Summer has examined what is available, investigated on his own behalf and given us this comprehensive book1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755365429</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1910593508|title=Great Britain's Great WarApollo|author=Jeremy PaxmanMatt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Throughout This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the nineteenth centurypassion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Britain was regularly at war with one or more overseas nationChris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of this, be it France, Russia, South Africa or elsewherethe authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These conflicts generally passed shortcuts are the public by, except for families who had loved ones serving overseasonly downside to the book. When the declaration If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of war against Germany was announced to a film you will be familiar with the crowds in London in August 1914, it was assumed slight feeling that once again most people would not be affected, there are scenes missing and that it would probably be over by Christmasdialogue has been trimmed. This was proved wrong on both counts. A weary conflict dragged on for four is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long years, and nobody in Britain escaped from the long shadow which it caststill felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919616</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1786331047|title=The Assassination of Race to Save the ArchdukeRomanovs: Sarajevo 1914 and the Murder That Changed The Truth Behind the WorldSecret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Greg King and Sue WoolmansHelen Rappaport
|rating=5
|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=Possibly no assassination in history can The basic facts about the deaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have had such momentous consequences for long since been established. For the history last few months of their lives in Russia the world as that of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria former Tsar and Tsarina, their children and his wife Sophie few remaining servants were held in Sarajevoincreasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. To prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the capital of Bosnia, revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to death in June 1914. It was their killing circumstances which led directly to , once the outbreak of the First World Warnews was confirmed beyond all doubt, just six weeks laterhorrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230759572</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|title=The First Bohemians: Life and Art in London's Golden Age|author=Vic Gatrell|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=It was in the eighteenth century that an area of London consisting of about half a square mile, from Soho and Leicester Square across Covent Garden’s Piazza to Drury Lane, and down from Long Acre Move on to the Strand, with Covent Garden at the very centre, became what has in modern times been recognised as the world’s first creative ‘bohemia’. This was where the cream of Britain’s significant artists, actors, poets, novelists, and dramatists of the age lived and worked, side by side with the city’s chief market traders, craftsmen, shopkeepers, rakes, pickpockets [[Newest Home and prostitutes. One might say that all human life was here.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846146771</amazonuk>}}Family Reviews]]