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[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=MoneyCharging Around: The Unauthorised BiographyExploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Felix MartinClive Wilkinson|rating=45|genre=Business and FinanceTravel|summary=Occasionally books are not exactly what they seem. When I picked this up, read the blurb and began the contents inside, I was expecting Clive Wilkinson has a kind of biography or history of money through the agestravelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. The opening chapter, a brief sketch of As he neared his eightieth birthday the economy idea of exploring the Pacific island edges of Yap and how it worked, seemed to confirm this. It tells us how England in the late nineteenth century Yap, east of the Philippine Islands, had an unwieldy coinage consisting of stone wheels around 12ft in diameter, called feielectric car was not totally outrageous. The population did not carry these aroundIn fact, let alone own them like we possess pounds it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and pencehis wife, as they were part of a sophisticated system of credit management.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578522</amazonuk>Joan, shouldn't it?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B09BLBP3P8|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Kept Calm and Carried On: RealOpposed Hitler, 1939-life stories from the Home Front1940|author=Anton RipponFrederic Seager

|summary=My generation Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is now at saturation point with the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the ''Phoney War'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters . We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and all Churchill coming in to save the accompanying variationsday. So much soVery little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, I was surprised to learn from as Frederic Seager argues in this book , it was that the now ubiquitous poster was never actually distributed. The poster had been planned as part of a campaign to raise morale, but after they were printed, vital significance in how the government felt it would have been seen as patronising, given that Britons were doing exactly that without the government message to bolster them upwar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178243190X</amazonuk>

Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of the Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, told in a mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote. }}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Tudor: The Family StoryFritz and Kurt|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's 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…|isbn=024156574X}}{{Frontpage|author=Leanda de LisleJohn Henry Phillips|title=The Search

|summary=With so many recent books published on various aspects of Tudor historyArchaeology cannot be child's play, it becomes harder 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 new angle or approach fair bit harder when you set out to the subject. Leanda de Lisle has thus pulled off the almost-impossiblefind some specific thing. Her starting point This book is not the battle of Bosworth and Henry Tudor’s claiming a case of the throne latter, as King Henry VII in 1485, but an event nearly fifty years earlier, our author promises to locate the death and funeral topic of Catherine de Valoisthe titular search. The widow of King Henry VAnd he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, Catherine married secondly the Welsh squire Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudurtarget might not exist any more – oh, known and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to posterity as Owen Tudor. Their elder son Edmund later married Margaret Beaufort, a descendant of John of Gauntparticular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, one of King Edward III’s several sonsour author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and it that he was the only child of this union, born lucky to survive when his mother was it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a mere girl thirteen years of agememorial to everyone else aboard, who would become the victor on Bosworth Fieldvast majority of whom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009955528X</amazonuk>1472146182

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Francis RussellB09F4CTKJR|title=101 Places in Italy : A Private Grand TourFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer

|genre=TravelHistorical Fiction|summary=Initially I struggled to describe this book. It's not a guide book: maps are intended only to give you a rough idea the later stages of where World War I and the United States has just entered the towns, cities conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and villages are - even major rivers are not shownjoined the 17 Aero Squadron. There are no opening times of museums or other details which This company was the visitor might need and whilst it's a tremendous help first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, the tourist there's a sense throughout first to be attached to the book of their being people who are best avoided if at all possible. November RAF and February seem the first to be sent into the skies to fight the best months for your visit in many cases. The 101 places you'll visit Germans in the book are given no wider importance than the works of art within themactive combat. Finally I accepted But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the subtitle of the book - ''A Private Grand Tour'' was the most appropriatenotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908524324</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0578761718|title=Steaming to Victory: How Britain's Railways Won the WarThe Inspiring History of a Special Relationship|author=Michael WilliamsNancy Carver

|summary=Soon after The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the end City of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, the First 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 WarII, when it was again ruined by bombs during the British railways entered what is generally regarded as their golden age, with Blitz. But that wasn't the heyday end of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the ‘Big Four’ companies, stones from the LNER (London and North Eastern), LMS (London, Midlands and Scottish), GWR (Great Western) and Southern Railways. By 1939 they church's walls were beginning to lose their virtual monopoly of land-based transport transported to lorriesFulton, buses and coachesMissouri. NeverthelessThere, as war became increasingly inevitable, they played a vital part in the preparation to keep grounds of Westminster College, the country moving, keeping industry church was rebuilt and the war effort supplied, helping in the evacuation of Dunkirk, or today serves as their press office put it in a pamphlet of 1943, 'tackling the biggest job in transport history'memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099557673</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|title=The Boys In The Boat: An Epic Journey to the Heart of Hitler's BerlinFrontpage|authorisbn=Daniel James Brown|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=You see, Jesse Owens had it easy – all he had to do was run fast. Alright, he did have to face unknown hardship, heinous prejudice at home and abroad, and make sure he was fast enough to outdo the rest of his compatriots then the world's best to win gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but others who wished to do the same had to do more. People such as those rowers in the coxed eights squad – people such as young Joe Rantz. He certainly had to face hardship, the prejudice borne by those in the moneyed east coast yacht clubs against an upstart from the NW USA, and when he got to compete he had to use so many more muscles, and operate at varying tempi, with the temperament of the weather and water against him, all in perfect synchronicity with seven other beefcakes. Despite rowing being the second greatest ticket at those Games, Joe's story is a lot less well known, and probably a lot more entertaining.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447210980</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1784385166|title=The Last Days of DetroitThird Reich in 100 Objects: Motor Cars, Motown and the Collapse A Material History of an Industrial GiantNazi Germany|author=Mark BinelliRoger Moorhouse|rating=45

|summary=Moving back What is the first image that comes to his native Detroit, Mark Binelli tries mind when you think of the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to see where it all went wrong for a city which was once ''Americaconcentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich's capitalist dream town'' but has shrunk more significantly than anywhere else fascist regime in the country over recent yearsall its iniquity. But some objects and images from that time may be less familiar to you. How did In this happenshort volume, and what effect Roger Moorhouse has it had on attempted to illustrate the residents there? Is period of the decline irreversible, or can those who want to bring about a changed and improved Detroit succeed?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553880</amazonuk>Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts. 

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Penny Loaves Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Butter Cheap: Britain in 1846Edward Gauvin (translator)|authortitle=Stephen BatesTiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes

|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=Until I picked up this booknever 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 would never have really thought certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of 1846 as the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a pivotal year in British historyvenue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. Stephen Bates has proved convincingly This book is practically flawless in these pages that if it was not exactly giving a watershed one, it nevertheless marked an era general browser's context for the whole season of changeprotests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781852545</amazonuk>1684056993

 {{newreview|title=Books 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 to the title and say – 'yup, that'. Or, I suppose, as in the non-existent follow-up, Adverts That Changed the World, simply repeat the mantra 'it does exactly what it says on the tin'. This paperback edition of the six year old original, fresh with several typos they had time to iron out alongside putting in Seamus Heaney's departure, makes life even easier, given that subtitle. I'm sure the more bibliophilic are already sold, and there is little influence I can bear on things. I will, however, soldier on.Frontpage|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782069429</amazonuk>}} {{newreview0648684806|title=Letters to the MidwifeClara Colby: Correspondence with the author of ''Call the Midwife''The International Suffragist|author=Jennifer WorthJohn Holliday

|genre=HistoryBiography|summary=[[:Category:Jennifer Worth|Jennifer Worth]], author The path of the bestselling Clara Dorothy Bewick''Call s life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the Midwife'', sadly passed away in May 2011 following a short illnessUSA. Her books have gained a great deal of popularity in recent At the time she was just three-years with their mixture -old but because of warmthsome childhood ailment, sadness she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and humour based three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her experiences working as and saw that she received a midwife good education, both in the East End and out of Londonschool. ''Letters to She was the Midwife'' features some of only child in the treasured letters received by Worth from former work colleagues household and fans of her bookschildhood was glorious. The resulting book is a rich testament By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to a life lived fully find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to a very special lady whose memories have managed to inspire and touch so manyjoin the family.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297869086</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert A Caro|title=The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=It's Clara would only know her mother for a matter of days since I finished listening to [[The Years of Lyndon Johnsonfew months: The Path to Power by Robert A Caro|The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power]]she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, the first part of Robert A Caro's definitive work on the President seven surviving children and despite having just spent over forty hours on the book I wanted to learn more. I was torn though - the second book died in a series is not often as good as the first and it struck me that these might childbirth not be the most exciting years in Johnson's lifelong after Clara arrived. Was this book going to be As the link which took us eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on to the more exciting times? Not Clara and Wisconsin was a bit of itrude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00GSHD0U6</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert A Caro1783784350|title=The Years of Lyndon JohnsonThis Golden Fleece: The Path to PowerA Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=Lyndon Baines Johnson It was the 36th President of the United StatesDecember and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, preceded by John F Kennedy writing to people she'd never met and succeeded by Richard Nixon, with both being remembered most for the way they left officepreparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. His five-year term in office January was overshadowed at going to be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the start by length and breadth of the Kennedy assassination British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and increasingly blighted by telling the debacle which was Vietnam, but there was something about Johnson which always intrigued me: story of wool's history and how does it had made and changed the landscape. She'd grown up on a poor boy from Texas hill country without an exceptional (or even sheep farm in Suffolk - 'good') education become president of a free-range child on the United States? farm''The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path - and learned to Powerspin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother' tells you all that you need to knows friend. This was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00GSHTJZQ</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1789017977|title=London Bridge in AmericaRonnie and Hilda's Romance: The Tall Story of Towards a Transatlantic CrossingNew Life after World War II|author=Travis ElboroughWendy Williams

|summary=The concept Ronnie Williams was the son of people from overseas countries buying and owning old Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and long-established British industries and works of art is not newEthel Wall. Yet one of the most unusual sales of this kind occurred 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 March 1968. It 1863, but he was a time of British economic crisis (where already many years older than Ethel and when he might well have we heard that before) and the ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaign, and shaved a few years off his age. For a time when while the concept of heritage family was unfashionable quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and the authorities seemed five-year-old Ronnie had to attach more value adjust to modernity than a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to relics of the Regency be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the Victorian agearmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565765</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1980891117|title=Born G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in Siberiathe life of George Engleheart|author=Tamara Astafieva, Michael Darlow and Debbie SlaterJohn Webley

|genre=AutobiographyArt|summary=I tend to shy away from reviewing book titlesGeorge Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, but this time it seems appropriate – here it's with a title that doesn't tell you career lasting from the half of 1770s to the storyRegency era. As much as Tamara Astafieva He was born in Siberiaalso one of the most prolific, and returned there several timespainting nearly 5, for many different reasons and with many very different outcomes, this is much more 000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of a picture King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the Soviet Union as we in Britain think names of it – Moscow, a bit each of Saint Petersburghis clients, and little else. That's not a fault – and again it's not half of the story. The story here subsequently transcribed them into what is so complex, so rich with detail and incident, and itself came about in such an unusual way, that any summary of the referred to as his fee book has its work cut out in defining its many qualities.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373343</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1789016304|title=Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!War and Love: A World without World War Ifamily's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Richard Ned LebowMelanie Martin|rating=4.5

|summary=On the first page of this bookMelanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, we are given a summary particularly in ''The Diary of events from August 2014Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. Queen Elizabeth is hosting a reception for Prince Harry A hundred and his brideseven 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 niece of 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 German Kaiser at Balmoralcity were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, while that the governor-general of India is involved Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in preparations for the next Commonwealth Games. This brief glimpse of a fantasy world is followed by a swift resumé of the twentieth centuryway that it did, but initial protests melted away as everything actually happened, and of changes in the world order wrought by both world warsorganisers became more circumspect. Chapter two tells It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of the assassination tens of Archduke Franz Ferdinand thousands of Austria and his wife Sophie at Sarajevo in June 1914, the final catalyst which precipitated the First World Warindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1137278536</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|title=Hundred Days|author=Nick LloydFrontpage|ratingisbn=4|genre=History|summary=Nick Lloyd is a historian. Well, actually he's a lecturer in ''Defence Studies'' at Kings College London - based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College in Shrivenham, Wiltshire.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670920061</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1908745819|title=Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of AuschwitzSurfacing|author=Thomas HardingKathleen Jamie

|summary=President John F Kennedy had been warned about going to Dallas - he himself referred to Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it as 'nut country' - but. Mostly we take them at their word, conscious of the upcoming 1964 presidential electionsor not, he needed to bring some support from the city onside and but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that was why he and we didn't like the First Lady found themselves in the motorcade which swept into Dealey Plaza on 22 November 1963book. That's a rare experience. There can be few people People who are not aware of what happened nextsensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, but Jonathan Mayo has presented a chronology I was told why. The blurb speaks of events over the next four days (author considering ''four daysan older, three murders, hundreds less tethered sense of storiesherself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the natural world, as of those aspects of the cover says) demonstrating the pressure under which the officials involved were working poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and the dreadful impact substance most of what happenedall, 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>1780721854</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David G Coleman0857058320|title=The Fourteenth Day: JFK Lord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and the Aftermath of the Cuban Missile CrisisAnne McLean (translator)

|summary=The commonly-held view of history would have us believe that ''Lord Of All the Cuban Missile Crisis began in mid-October 1962 and concluded on 28 October, with Dead'' is a journey to uncover the world heaving a collective sigh of relief author's lost ancestor's life and moving on to think of other thingsdeath. The truth Cercas issearching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, of courseCercas' great uncle, rather different and is the figure who looms large over the crisis rumbled book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for weeks and months to come, occasionally almost bubbling to the boil again as Kennedy and Krushchev fenced with each otherthis dictator. Historian David G Coleman has used The question at the secret White House recordings centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to take us into be a hero whilst having fought for the Oval Office and listen to what really went onwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393346803</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008294011|title=How to Lose a Country: The War that Ended Peace: How Europe abandoned peace for the First World War7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Margaret MacMillanEce Temelkuran

|summary=One could argue 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 main title of this book is slightly questionablefactors which led to... '' Throughout the half-century or so before the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, Europe had rarely been free from conflict, with the Franco-Prussian, Graeco-Turkish I agreed that she was right and Balkan wars for wasn't certain whether it was a startgood or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to. Nevertheless, the majority I think now that I do know. We are in danger of the continent was at peace with itself losing democracy and most whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of its neighbours during this perioda better one, particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668272X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Vincent Bugliosi1788037812|title=ParklandThe Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=4.5

|summary=''Parkland'' is not just Originally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a book about history but a book ''with'' a historycrime remained in place for 82 years. Vincent Bugliosi published ''Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John FBut during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Kennedy'' in 2007 with much of Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the book being based on his preparation for a mock trial nature of Lee Harvey Oswald which was shown on British televisionhomosexuality appeared. This book was an exhaustive look at what happened in Dallas They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and at subsequent events such John Addington Symonds, as well as the trial heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of Jack Ruby society and studying homosexuality was common on the conspiracy theories which have abounded European Continent, but barely talked about in the intervening fifty years. ''Four Days in November: The Assassination UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of President John F. Kennedy'' was published in June 2008 homosexuality, and is - as beginning the title suggests - restricted struggle for recognition and equality, leading to what happened on 22 November 1963 and the following three days. ''Parkland'' is the film tiemilestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in version of that book1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393347338</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stephen Jin-Nom Lee and Howard Webster1910593508|title=Canton Elegy: A Father's Letter of Sacrifice, Survival and Love|rating=4.5Apollo|genreauthor=Autobiography|summary=Stephen Jin-Nom LeeMatt Fitch, 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 Chris Baker and Times of Oswald of NorthumbriaMike Collins|rating=4.5

|summary=Born in 604 and around for only 38 years, Oswald didn't live that long but he packed This incredible graphic novel is a lot in. Born into Bernician royalty, Oswald love letter to the teenager had to flee with his mother Moon landings and siblings when his father Aelfrith was killed at the Battle of the River Idle. Any noble wanting to beat his way to passion for the top would naturally kill Oswald's family and so an obscure upbringing in Ireland seemed the answer. Howeversubject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Oswald grows strong Chris Baker and bides his time until he comes home and clears his own path, ruling Northumbria for 8 years until his own untimely demiseMike Collins. During those 8 years he united kingdoms, helped establish Christianity This is a story we know well and became the inspiration because 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 authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the myth while explaining blanks. These shortcuts are the time we call only downside to the Dark Ages in book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the brutally separated lands slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that we now call Great Britain could easily have been three times as long and Irelandstill felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781854181</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1786331047|title=Empress Dowager CixiThe Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Jung ChangHelen Rappaport

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=It’s easy to see why Jung Chang selected Cixi as The basic facts about the focal point for her study deaths of China’s tumultuous modern history. Cixi is a truly fascinating womanNicholas and Alexandra, one some of few human beings whose existence can be honestly said to which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have shaped long since been established. For the course last few months of history. Cixi’s biography is not only a fascinating read due to her own political machinationstheir lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, but also because of the immense transformations that occurred their children and few remaining servants were held in China during her lifetimeincreasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. Jung Chang offers a detailed exploration of the period To prevent them from Cixi’s entrance to court being rescued, in 1852 July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to her death in 1908circumstances which, during which time once the ancient dynastic customs of China gave way to the advent of the industrial agenews was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087436</amazonuk>

{{newreview|title=The Explorer Gene|author=Tom Cheshire|rating=4|genre=History|summary=''The Explorer Gene'' relates the remarkable story of three generations of the Piccard family, each of whom managed Move on to push the boundaries of travel [[Newest Home and break new frontiers. The grandfather, Auguste Piccard was the first human to enter the stratosphere, using en experimental balloon of his own invention. His later work, designing submarines, enabled his son Jacques to become the first person to descend to the bottom of the infamous Mariana trench, setting a world record for the deepest dive. Grandson Bertrand became the first person to fly around the world in a balloon and now seeks to break new records by means of a solar-powered craft that he intends to pilot all the way around the earth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720890</amazonuk>}}Family Reviews]]