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[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=SlideshowCharging Around: Memories Exploring the Edges of a Wartime ChildhoodEngland by Electric Car|author=Marjorie Ann WattsClive Wilkinson|rating=3.5|genre=HistoryTravel|summary=''Slideshow'' may seem an unusual title for a book about growing up during the Second World War, but author Marjorie Ann Watts is quick to explain why it was chosen. Her job as a book illustrator and artist requires astute observation skills and she Clive Wilkinson has what might be known as a 'photographic memory', or history of travelling by unconventional means with a gift preference for recalling specific scenes from her past in great detailslow travel. She explains it this way: 'All I have to do is pull a 'slide' from As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the accumulated silt edges of memoryEngland in an electric car was not totally outrageous...there In fact, it is: should be a varnish-clear image as vivid as the day it was recordedpleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, however long ago.shouldn'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373599</amazonuk>t it?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B09BLBP3P8|title=HitlerNeville Chamberlain's FuriesWar: German Women in the Nazi Killing FieldsHow Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Wendy LowerFrederic Seager|rating=34.5

|summary=If one were Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to describe misconceptions about history. One such is the Nazi regime with one's own adjectives, I'm sure that sooner or later, after all scrubbing from the ruder and more pejorative emotional ones had been thought popular imagination of, 'masculine' would come up. Let's face it, it would be a scholar who could name any leading female Nazis beyond Eva Braun and Mrs Goebbels, who nobody I think has ever put at the forefront early days of actual policyWorld War II from 1939-40, thinking or actions. But there were females at known as the front – many thousands, it seems, taking themselves away from Germany with ideas of the ''Lebensraum'' being opened up out East; moving their skills as either secretary, nurse, teacher or just willing ''HausfrauPhoney War'' to the occupied territories, where… well, that would be telling. This book is the one to read if you want that told, but it doesn't do it in the most brilliant way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099572281</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler's Last Witness: The Memoirs of Hitler's Bodyguard|author=Rochus Misch|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I am proud to declare an interest in all things Holocaust, one of the key areas of which was the last days of Hitler – the Downfall, if you like, way before youtube satirists. So this book, from the man who for some unspecified years was the last eye-witness to have been in the Fuhrerbunker at the end of the Nazi regime, was always going to be a great read. It remained that even after the foreword dismissed its own book, pointing war breaking out differences here to the canon of thought about the timings etc of April/May 1945, and declaring the author somewhat naïve Churchill coming in not being so aware, circumspect and authoritative about to save the major points of WWIIday.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848327498</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Making of Home|author=Judith Flanders|rating=4.5|genre=Lifestyle|summary=In 1900 a young girl Very little time is spent on this period in a strange land told the people around her that she had decided she no longer wanted to live in their lovely country, but would much rather return to the ‘dry, grey’ place she had come from, because there was ‘no place like home’. The girl was Dorothy, while the people around her were the citizens of Oz – cultural reflections andyet, yesas Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was all fiction, of vital significance in how the creation of author L. Frank Baum. Nevertheless he had put into words something which many people deeply felt but had not yet expressedwar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877986</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=3756228711|title=Sherlock HolmesCDC: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Diehappy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Alex WernerHans Bodmer

|summary=It has been over 125 years since the first Sherlock Holmes story was written and since then, the character has been subject to countless interpretations on stage, screen and in literature. Such was the popularity of the famous detective, that his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, attempted on more than one occasion to 'free himself' from Holmes, The history of the most notable example being his 'death' at Reichenbach Falls. Readers were most upset and Doyle eventually bowed to public pressure, reviving the eponymous hero for further adventures. In the years that followed, Holmes took on a life independent development of IT could fill books of his author, as his stories were adapted for stage and filmseveral hundred pages. An unconcerned Doyle allowed free rein with the character, famously saying: 'You may marry or murder or do whatever you like with him.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091958725</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|title=Witches: James I and Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the English Witch Hunts|author=Tracy Borman|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Gossip is as old as human natureshort, but generally harmless. It was a different matter in medieval timesexplosive, when what might start as relatively innocuous tittle-tattle could breed suspicionhistory of the Control Data Company, paranoiaCDC, and ultimately accusations against women and girls of witchcraftfor whom he worked. More often than notIt's a fascinating tale, it would end told in a horrible death by execution - drowning, strangulation on the gallows, or being burned alive. The unsavoury business mixture of witchcraft trials in early seventeenth-century England was encouraged by King James I, who with his obsession with technological summary and knowledge of the black arts and his firm belief in the threat of demonic forces believed that witches had been responsible for fierce storms that had come close to drowning his future bride on her voyage by sea from Scotland to Englandwry anecdote.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954914X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Rest in PiecesJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|authortitle=Bess LovejoyFritz and Kurt

|summary=All sorts has happened 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 deceased famous people - stolenlocate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, soldthe target might not exist any more – oh, stuffedand it's underwater, etcwhen he cannot dive. Bess Lovejoy Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has collected promised to find the fates of the celebrity deceased landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and tells them here - in a cracking little book that will be ideal as he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a stocking filler or small gift for those who enjoy slightly gruesome talesmemorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715648489</amazonuk>1472146182

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn= B09F4CTKJR|title=The Last EscaperFlights for Freedom|author=Peter TunstallSteven Burgauer

|genre=HistoryHistorical Fiction|summary=It''The Last Escaper'' opens differently to many s the later stages of World War I and the great escape biographies that were released soon after United States has just entered the war as it conflict. Petrol Petronus is told some 70 years latera young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. Peter Tunstall This company was an the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF pilot who was shot down and spent many years as a Prisoner Of War across occupied Europe, including the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in Colditzactive combat. He lived through But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the war, notoriously difficult but also lived through many decades of peacemajestic Sopwith Camel. Will these years of the relative quiet life lesson the tales of bravery and dare doing of the war? Of course not!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>071564923X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=The Shop Girls0578761718|author=Elee Seymour|rating=4|genretitle=The Inspiring History|summary=Heyworth's Department Store. The chances are, you have never heard of it before. I know that I hadn't, before I picked up this book. And yet, there was a time, not so long ago, when everyone in Cambridge would have been familiar with Heyworth's, even if they couldn't afford to shop there themselves. Smaller than most department stores, it offered high-end fashion, childrenswear and millinery, with a staff of smiling, smartly-dressed sales assistants ready to cater to the customer's every whim. It seems sad that with the passing of generations, the very existence of the store seems to have slipped away from the collective consciousness; ask most people in Cambridge if they remember Heyworth's and the majority response would be negative.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751554960</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSpecial Relationship|author=Elizabeth Drew|title=Washington Journal: reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's downfallNancy Carver|rating=4.5

|summary=In early August 1974 I The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in what was then Yugoslaviarecords. Sadly, There the original church was a group destroyed in the Great Fire of us, all interested London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the political newsfire and then survived for centuries until World War II, but essentially cut off from when it was again ruined by bombs during the outside world apart from the previous dayBlitz. But that wasn's English newspapers which arrived mid morning. It was on t the 11th end of August that one of our number dashed onto its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the beach yelling ''Hechurch's resigned. He's RESIGNED!!!'' No one had any need walls were transported to ask who he was talking aboutFulton, Missouri. We'd all been following There, in the news about Richard Nixon's doings and wrongdoings for a year, with no one certain that he would be forced out grounds of office. The investigative journalism (ohWestminster College, for the days when journalists uncovered rather than merely covered) church was done by Carl Bernstein rebuilt and Bob Woodward, but some of the most insightful reportage came from Elizabeth Drew writing for ''The New Yorker''today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649167</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1784385166|title=Golden ParasolThe Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Wendy Law-YoneRoger Moorhouse

|summary=If What is the first image that comes to mind when you look her up Wendy Law-Yone is described as think of the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a Burmese-born American authorconcentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. That ''Burmese-born American'' might But some objects and images from that time may be an accurate description of her current citizenshipless familiar to you. In this short volume, but it barely hints at Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the ethnic mix period of her heritage, nor the Third Reich through one hundred of her personal closeness (through her father) to her original homeland's struggle for freedom and democracyits material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555999</amazonuk> 

 {{newreview|title=The Great War: The People's StoryFrontpage|author=Isobel Charman|rating=5|genre=History|summary=During this centenary yearLun Zhang, we have seen many ways of telling the history of the conflict which broke out among the Great Powers of Europe and soon involved all four corners of the world. This volume, based on a recent ITV series of the same titleAdrien Gombeaud, approaches it from an angle which I have not seen before. It follows the course of events over the four years through the letters, memoirs Ameziane and diaries of about a dozen individuals as it presents their story against the background of fighting on the continental mainland, and of bereavement, shortages and more at home. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947255</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewEdward Gauvin (translator)|title=Elizabeth of York|author=Alison WeirTiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes

|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=Elizabeth I never really followed the events of York could have ruled England were she not a woman and were she not born Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the fifteenth centurysecond half of their teens has other priorities, you know. Oldest daughter I certainly didn't know of Edward IV, she was the heiress weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the Yorkist dynasty after students before the death of Richard III at Bosworth (massacre and her own younger brothers in the Tower birth of London). Henry VIIthe Tank Man image, I didn't know how the first Tudor king and victor by conquest, area had at best long been a tenuous claim to the English throne. He legitimised it by his marriage to Elizabeth venue for political protest, and proclaimed it through the Tudor rose, that joining of I didn't know more than a spit about the emblems of York and Lancasterpeople involved on either side. Elizabeth This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's marriage to Henry produced one context for the whole season of our most famous kings protests back in Henry VIII1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099546477</amazonuk>1684056993

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0648684806|title=A Broken WorldClara Colby: Letters, diaries and memories of the Great WarThe International Suffragist|author=Sebastian Faulks and Hope WolfJohn Holliday|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryBiography|summary=Sebastian Faulks and Dr Hope Wolf have expertly brought together this farThe 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-reaching collection old but because of memoriessome childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, diariesshe remained with her grandparents, letters who doted on her and postcards written during saw that she received a good education, both in and after out of school. She was the First World War. While Faulks is only child in the author of novels such as ''Birdsong'' household and ''Charlotte Gray''her childhood was glorious. By contrast, Dr Hope Wolf is a research fellow her family had become pioneer farmers in English at the University mid-west of Cambridgethe United States and life was hard, whose doctoral research focused on archives at as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the Imperial War Museumfamily. The combination of such Clara would only know her mother for a respected authorfew months: she was married for fifteen years, whose most famous (and arguably his best) novel is set in the First World Warhad ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and an academic whose expertise is the died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the same areaeldest girl, means that this fascinating collection hits all the right notes. It's commemorative, poignant a heavy burden would fall on Clara and very humanWisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091954223</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=The Greatest Escape: How one French community saved thousands of lives from the Nazis1783784350|authortitle=Peter Grose|rating=3|genre=History|summary=We've read it before and been grateful, and now we can read it again, and for the same reasons – educational, entertainment, moralistic – we can be grateful. We've probably all heard how one place or circumstance – most famously, Oscar SchindlerThis Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's factory – led to a major underhand rescue operation to keep Jews from being the victims of the Final Solution in World War Two. This book is a further example, but one of a whole French district being complicit in helping defy the Nazi authorities. Centred around Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the heart of southern France, a very rural community based around Huguenot Protestants with their own experiences of religious persecution decided en masse to act as shelter for a whole host of people – mostly children rescued from transit and internment camps elsewhere in France, and the Jewish victims of the Vichy government rules demanding they be stateless or, worse, victims of a certain one-way train ride. But beyond becoming an idyllic place to hide out in plain view, the towns and villages also conspired to actively export the Jews themselves – to places of safety.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886267</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Mill GirlsKnitted History|author=Tracy JohnsonEsther Rutter

|summary=It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she''d never met and preparing spreadsheets. The Mill Girls'' is job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be a collection time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of true stories based on interviews the British Isles with women who worked at Lancashireoccasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's cotton mills during history and how it had made and changed the war yearslandscape. Leaving school at the tender age of 14, the girls were thrown headlong into the world of work, at She'd grown up on a time when jobs were plentiful and the benefits culture we know today was nonsheep farm in Suffolk -existent. The choice was '' a simple one: work or starve. Conditions were harsh, free-range child on the mills noisyfarm'' - and learned to spin, dangerous knit and dirty weave from her mother and pay her mother's friend. This was low. Despite this, many of the women look back at their time 'in mill' with warm fondness and nostalgiaher blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091958288</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1789017977|title=MoneyRonnie and Hilda's Romance: The Unauthorised BiographyTowards a New Life after World War II|author=Felix MartinWendy Williams

|genre=Business and FinanceHistory|summary=Occasionally books are Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or not exactly what they seem. When I picked this upwere ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, read the blurb but he was already many years older than Ethel and began the contents inside, I was expecting he might well have shaved a kind of biography or history of money through the agesfew years off his age. The opening chapter, For a brief sketch of while the economy of family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the Pacific island of Yap 1929 Depression and how it worked, seemed five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to confirm be well-turned-out and thiswould stay with him throughout his life. It tells us how in the late nineteenth century Yap, east of He joined the Philippine Islands, had an unwieldy coinage consisting of stone wheels around 12ft army at eighteen in diameter, called fei1942. The population did not carry these around, let alone own them like we possess pounds and pence, as they were part of a sophisticated system of credit management.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578522</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1980891117|title=How Britain Kept Calm and Carried OnG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: Real-A year in the life stories from the Home Frontof George Engleheart|author=Anton RipponJohn Webley

|genre=HistoryArt|summary=My generation is now at saturation point George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with 'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters and all a career lasting from the accompanying variations. So much so, I was surprised 1770s to learn from this book was that the now ubiquitous poster Regency era. He was never actually distributed. The poster had been planned as part also one of a campaign to raise moralethe most prolific, but after they were printedpainting nearly 5, 000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the government felt it would have been seen as patronisingnames of each of his clients, given that Britons were doing exactly that without the government message and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to bolster them upas his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178243190X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1789016304|title=TudorWar and Love: The Family StoryA family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Leanda de LisleMelanie Martin

|summary=With so many recent books published on various aspects 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 Tudor historyAnn 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, it becomes harder but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to find happen in a new angle or approach country with liberal values who were resistant to the subjectGerman occupation. Leanda de Lisle has thus pulled off Most people believed that the almost-impossible. Her starting point is not occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the battle of Bosworth and Henry Tudor’s claiming of Germans might reach the throne as King Henry VII in 1485, but an event nearly fifty years earliercity were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the death and funeral of Catherine de Valois. The widow of King Henry V, Catherine married secondly Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the Welsh squire Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudurway that it did, known to posterity but initial protests melted away as Owen Tudorthe organisers became more circumspect. Their elder son Edmund later married Margaret Beaufort, It's an atrocity on a descendant of John vast scale but made up of Gaunt, one tens of King Edward III’s several sons, and it was the only child of this union, born when his mother was a mere girl thirteen years thousands of age, who would become the victor on Bosworth Fieldindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009955528X</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|author=Francis Russell|title=101 Places in Italy : A Private Grand Tour|rating=4.5|genre=Travel|summary=Initially I struggled to describe this book. It's not a guide book: maps are intended only to give you a rough idea of where the towns, cities and villages are - even major rivers are not shown. There are no opening times of museums or other details which the visitor might need and whilst it's a tremendous help to the tourist there's a sense throughout the book of their being people who are best avoided if at all possible. November and February seem to be the best months for your visit in many cases. The 101 places you'll visit in the book are given no wider importance than the works of art within them. Finally I accepted that the subtitle of the book - ''A Private Grand Tour'' was the most appropriate.Frontpage|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908524324</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1908745819|title=Steaming to Victory: How Britain's Railways Won the WarSurfacing|author=Michael WilliamsKathleen Jamie|rating=4.5

|summary=Soon after the end of the First World WarSometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, the British railways entered what is generally regarded as their golden age, with the heyday of the ‘Big Four’ companies, the LNER (London and North Eastern), LMS (London, Midlands and Scottish), GWR (Great Western) and Southern Railwaysthey tell you ''this one has your name on it''. By 1939 they were beginning to lose Mostly we take them at their virtual monopoly of land-based transport to lorriesword, buses and coaches. Nevertheless, as war became increasingly inevitableor not, but rarely do we ask them why they played a vital part in the preparation to keep the country moving, keeping industry and the war effort supplied, helping in the evacuation of Dunkirk, or as their press office put thought so unless it in a pamphlet of 1943, turns out that we didn'tackling t like the biggest job in transport history'book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099557673</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Boys In The Boat: An Epic Journey to the Heart of HitlerThat's Berlin|author=Daniel James Brown|rating=4a rare experience.5|genre=Biography|summary=You seePeople who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, Jesse Owens had rarely get it easy – all he had to do wrong. In this case, I was run fasttold why. 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 The blurb speaks of his compatriots then the worldauthor considering ''s best to win gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympicsan older, but others who wished to do the same had to do moreless tethered sense of herself. '' People such as those rowers in the coxed eights squad – people such as young Joe RantzOlder. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. He certainly had Add to face hardshipthat my love of the natural world, the prejudice borne by of those in the moneyed east coast yacht clubs against an upstart from aspects of the NW USA, poetic and when he got to compete he had to use so many more muscleslyrical that are about style not form, and operate at varying tempisubstance most of all, with the temperament of the weather and water against himabout connection. Of course, all in perfect synchronicity with seven other beefcakesthis book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. Despite rowing being the second greatest ticket at those Games, Joe's story is a lot less well known, and probably a lot more entertainingI am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447210980</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0857058320|title=The Last Days of Detroit: Motor Cars, Motown and Lord Of All the Collapse of an Industrial GiantDead|author=Mark BinelliJavier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

|summary=Moving back to his native Detroit, Mark Binelli tries to see where it all went wrong for a city which was once ''AmericaLord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the author's capitalist dream townlost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle' but has shrunk more significantly than anywhere else s death in the country Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over recent yearsthe book. How did 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 happen, and what effect has book is whether it had on the residents there? Is the decline irreversible, or can those who want is possible for his great uncle to bring about be a changed and improved Detroit succeed?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553880</amazonuk>hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008294011|title=Penny Loaves and Butter CheapHow to Lose a Country: Britain in 1846The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Stephen BatesEce Temelkuran

|summary=Until I picked up this book, A little while ago a friend asked me if I would never have really thought of 1846 as a pivotal year that we were living through what in British years to come would be discussed by A level historystudents when faced with the question ''Discuss the factors which led to. ..'' Stephen Bates has proved convincingly in these pages I agreed that if she was right and wasn't certain whether it was not exactly a watershed 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, it nevertheless marked an era of changeparticularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781852545</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1788037812|title=Books that Changed The Fraternity of the WorldEstranged: The 50 Most Influential Books Fight for Homosexual Rights 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 supposeEngland, as in the non-existent follow1891-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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782069429</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Letters to the Midwife: Correspondence with the author of ''Call the Midwife''1908|author=Jennifer WorthBrian Anderson|rating=45

|summary=[[:Category:Jennifer Worth|Jennifer Worth]]Originally passed in 1885, author of the bestselling ''Call the Midwife''law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, sadly passed away in May 2011 following a short illnessrestrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Her Between 1891 and 1908, three books have gained a great deal on the nature of popularity in recent years with their mixture 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 warmth, sadness society and humour based studying homosexuality was common on her experiences working as a midwife the European Continent, but barely talked about in the East End UK, so the publications of London. ''Letters these men were hugely significant – contributing to the Midwife'' features some scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the treasured letters received by Worth from former work colleagues struggle for recognition and fans equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of her books. The resulting book is a rich testament to a life lived fully and to a very special lady whose memories have managed to inspire and touch so manysame-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297869086</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert A Caro1910593508|title=The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of AscentApollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins

|genre=AutobiographyHistory|summary=It's only This incredible graphic novel is a matter of days since I finished listening love letter to [[The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power the Moon landings and the passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Robert A Caro|The Years Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power]]this, the first part of Robert A Caro's definitive work on authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the President and despite having just spent over forty hours on only downside to the book I wanted to learn more. I was torn though - the second If you've ever read a comic book in adaptation of a series is not often as good as film you will be familiar with the first slight feeling that there are scenes missing and it struck me that these might not be the most exciting years in Johnson's lifedialogue has been trimmed. Was this book going to be the link which took us on to the more exciting This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times? Not a bit of itas long and still felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00GSHD0U6</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert A Caro1786331047|title=The Years of Lyndon JohnsonRace to Save the Romanovs: The Path Truth Behind the Secret Plans to PowerRescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport

|summary=The concept basic facts about the deaths of people from overseas countries buying and owning old Nicholas and Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have long-since been established British industries and works of art is not new. Yet one of For the most unusual sales last few months of this kind occurred their lives in March 1968. It was a time of British economic crisis (where Russia the former Tsar and when have we heard that before) Tsarina, their children and the ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaignfew remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. To prevent them from being rescued, and a time when in July 1918 the concept of heritage was unfashionable revolutionary regime had them all shot and the authorities seemed bayoneted to attach more value to modernity than to relics of death in circumstances which, once the Regency and the Victorian agenews was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565765</amazonuk>

{{newreview|title=Born in Siberia|author=Tamara Astafieva, Michael Darlow and Debbie Slater|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I tend Move on to shy away from reviewing book titles, but this time it seems appropriate – here it's a title that doesn't tell you the half of the story. 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 is much more of a picture of the Soviet Union as we in Britain think of it – Moscow, a bit of Saint Petersburg, and little else. That's not a fault – and again it's not half of the story. The story here is so complex, so rich with detail and incident, [[Newest Home and itself came about in such an unusual way, that any summary of the book has its work cut out in defining its many qualities.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373343</amazonuk>}}Family Reviews]]