Difference between revisions of "Newest History Reviews"

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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1785633457
|author=Jerry White
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|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car
|title=Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War
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|author=Clive Wilkinson
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=History
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|genre=Travel
|summary=It seems that only recently, with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War upon us, that historians have really looked thoroughly at the social history aspect and the effect it had on the population at home.  Jerry White, who has already made a study of London over the last three centuries or so in previous titles, now turns his attention to life in the capital during those momentous four years.
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|summary=Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099556049</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=B09BLBP3P8
|author=David Esterly
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|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940
|title=The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making
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|author=Frederic Seager
|rating=4
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|summary=Bouncing between his studio in upstate New York and the sites of various English sojourns, woodcarver David Esterly's seems to be an idyllic existence. Yet it's not all cosy cottages in the snow and watching geese and coyotes when he looks up from his workbench. There is an element of hard-won retreat from the trials of life in this memoir, but at the same time there is an argument for the essential difficulty of the artist's life. 'Carvers are starvers,' a wizened English carver once told him. Certainly there is no great fortune to be won from a profession as obscure as limewood carving, but the rewards outweigh the hard graft for Esterly.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649191</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Emma Tennant, Hilary Bailey and David Elliott
 
|title=Did We Meet on Grub Street?
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|summary=Essentially, the three authors (all of whom have long careers in the book industry) revel in the idea of being whining old curmudgeons who miss the good old days of publishing. This unashamed nostalgia provides the focus of the book and allows the writers to recount numerous anecdotes from their days in the publishing business. Whilst the primary audience for this book may well be students of creative writing and media studies, it also serves as an interesting exploration of an aspect of modern history: how a once-burgeoning industry is now a shell of its former self, much like a lot of manufacturing. Because of this, I was disappointed that no space was given to a consideration of how the rise of the e-book and Kindle has directly damaged both the sale of books and the potential for new books to be written (fewer real books sold = fewer financial advances paid to writers = fewer books written). Also, given the clear love of books as treasured artifacts, the dismissal of the Harry Potter phenomenon seems truculent, given the impetus the series gave to reading amongst both the young and adults.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704372983</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=John Van der Kiste
 
|title=The Prussian Princesses: The Sisters of Kaiser Wilhelm II
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Kaiser Wilhelm II is well known and not for the best of reasons and he's certainly over-shadowed his six younger siblings.  John Van der Kiste's first biography was of his father, Kaiser Friedrich III and he has also written about Emperor Wilhelm II so he is well placed to write about the three youngest children Kaiser Friedrich and Victoria, Princess Royal.  Originally he intended to write about Friedrich's second daughter, but it quickly became obvious that the most satisfying biography - for reader and author - would be a biography of Victoria, Sophie and Margaret, their mother's ''kleebatt'' or trio, as they were known.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00QKROC9W</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Richard Weight
 
|title=MOD: From Bebop to Britpop, Britain's Biggest Youth Movement
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=''Mod'' is arguably a rather-overused term.  First of all, there is the matter of establishing a precise definition.  ''Modernism'', which was soon abbreviated for convenience, began as the working-class movement of a newly affluent nation.  Once the age of immediate post-war austerity was gone, the cult of a youth keen to shake off the drab conformity of life in 1950s Britain took hold.  It was more than anything else an amalgam of American music and European fashions, beginning as a popular cult and gradually becoming a mainstream culture.
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|summary=Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the ''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in to save the day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was of vital significance in how the war played out.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099597888</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=3756228711
|author=Stian Bromark and Hon Khiam Leong (translator)
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|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
|title=Massacre in Norway: The 2011 Terror Attack on Oslo and the Utoya Youth Camp
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|author=Hans Bodmer
|rating=2.5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Anders Behring Breivik was 32 when he both planted a van bomb in Oslo's central government district to hit out at what he thought was 'Cultural Marxism', which killed 8, then left for an island in a lake 24 miles away, where a notably political youth gathering was enjoying itself.  He gunned down 69 people – more than one in ten of those at the camp – and wounded many scores more.  He also spammed countless people with another of his projects, a lengthy manifesto declaring his ideas about Islamisation and what he saw as a pernicious multiculturalism ruining his country.  His case was one of the more superlative events in modern Nordic history – as was the surprisingly lenient sentence for over 70 lives of just 21 years. This is, as you'd expect, one of the many books to result from the case.
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|summary=''The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1612346685</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of the Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, told in a mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote.
|author=Dan Jones
 
|title=Magna Carta: The Making and Legacy of the Great Charter
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=For what do we – and by courtesy of a lengthy timeline in history, would the Americans likewise – most likely owe thanks to a spigurnel?  What is the most revered legal document in history, which sets out the rights of man – but also has time to talk about widows' rights, fish traps, and to be both sexist and to discuss the importance to people's estates to debts owed Jewish moneylenders?  What will probably be the only notable historical experience of Britain in 1215, when we finally get diverted from thinking about WWI and discuss the 800 years of something else, even though the authority of no less than the Pope declared it null and void within ten weeks of its being finished?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781858853</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene
|author=Iain Gately
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|title=Fritz and Kurt
|title=Rush Hour
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 +
|genre=Confident Readers
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|summary=We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school.  Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch.  But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms.  ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of 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…
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|isbn=024156574X
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{{Frontpage
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|author=John Henry Phillips
 +
|title=The Search
 +
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Rush Hour.
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|summary=Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?
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|isbn=1472146182
500 Million commuters go through it every day, and it's hard to avoid - whether like me you're a jaded Londoner stuck in someone's armpit whilst attempting to read on a cramped tube, or trying to navigate busy country lanes in order to do the school run and get to work on time, we've probably all experienced it. But have you ever thought about the history of it?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781854068</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn= B09F4CTKJR
|author=James Evans
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|title= Flights for Freedom
|title=Merchant Adventurers: The Voyage of Discovery that Transformed Tudor England
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|author= Steven Burgauer
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=We tend to associate the golden age of global navigation and exploration with the Elizabethan age and such luminaries as Drake, Raleigh and Hawkins. This book does us all a service in reminding us of the original pioneers, whom they overshadowed and who seem less well-remembered these days.
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|summary=It's the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780221029</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0578761718
|author=Emma Marriott
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|title=The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship
|title=A History of the World in Numbers
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|author=Nancy Carver
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=Make no mistake, this book does what it says on the cover.  That also goes to say that it is ''not'' A History of the World ''of'' Numbers, or A History of the World's Numbers and what they might mean, as other books provide.  This is a primer of the world's history, right from the earliest days of civilisation up to the close of World War Two, in handy bite-sized chunks, where the headline data can be given using a number.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782432175</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler
 
|author=Philip Ball
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Picture yourself in Nazi Germany, at any time of the Reich's powers. What do you do, and how do you behave? Do you recognise the fact Jews are being oppressed and have been since the first days of the Nazi regime?  Do you do anything about this, or are you aware of the problems the country has had due to losing the Great War and having the whole Weimar Republic and hyperinflation, and just look after number one?  Now picture yourself as a scientist.  All you've known your adult life has been to furthering your knowledge in, say, physics. Do you again work purely for your own ends?  For the country's – knowing all about its rulers?  Or can you segregate your bosses and their leaders from your needs, and perhaps seek knowledge for the sake of the world?  It's probably not a conundrum that has hit you before, given its scientific bent, but it's worth looking at what was going on at that time. Which way did Planck walk?  Did Heisenberg have principles?
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|summary=The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly,  the original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that wasn't the end of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in the grounds of Westminster College, the church was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581647</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1784385166
|title=Slideshow: Memories of a Wartime Childhood
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|title=The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany
|author=Marjorie Ann Watts
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|author=Roger Moorhouse
|rating=3.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|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 has what might be known as a 'photographic memory', or a gift for recalling specific scenes from her past in great detail. She explains it this way:
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|summary=What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. But some objects and images from that time may be less familiar to you. In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts. 
 
 
'All I have to do is pull a 'slide' from the accumulated silt of memory...there it is: a varnish-clear image as vivid as the day it was recorded, however long ago.'
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373599</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields
 
|author=Wendy Lower
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=If one were to describe the Nazi regime with one's own adjectives, I'm sure that sooner or later, after all the ruder and more pejorative emotional ones had been thought 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 of actual policy, thinking or actions.  But there were females at 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 ''Hausfrau'' 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=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 out differences here to the canon of thought about the timings etc of April/May 1945, and declaring the author somewhat naïve in not being so aware, circumspect and authoritative about the major points of WWII.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848327498</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)
|title=The Making of Home
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|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
|author=Judith Flanders
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Lifestyle
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|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=In 1900 a young girl 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 – and, yes, it was all fiction, the creation of author L. Frank BaumNevertheless he had put into words something which many people deeply felt but had not yet expressed.
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|summary=I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know.  I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either sideThis book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877986</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1684056993
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0648684806
|title=Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die
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|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist
|author=Alex Werner
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|author=John Holliday
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=History
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|genre=Biography
|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 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 of his author, as his stories were adapted for stage and film. An unconcerned Doyle allowed free rein with the character, famously saying: 'You may marry or murder or do whatever you like with him.'
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|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA.  At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers.  Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school.  She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family.  Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091958725</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1783784350
|title=Witches: James I and the English Witch Hunts
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|title=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History
|author=Tracy Borman
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|author=Esther Rutter
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Gossip is as old as human nature, but generally harmlessIt was a different matter in medieval times, when what might start as relatively innocuous tittle-tattle could breed suspicion, paranoia, and ultimately accusations against women and girls of witchcraftMore often than not, it would end in a horrible death by execution - drowning, strangulation on the gallows, or being burned aliveThe unsavoury business of witchcraft trials in early seventeenth-century England was encouraged by King James I, who with his obsession with 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 England.
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|summary=It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'd never met and preparing spreadsheetsThe job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind.  January was going to be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscapeShe'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the farm'' - and learned to spin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friendThis was in her blood.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954914X</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=Rest in Pieces
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|isbn=1789017977
|author=Bess Lovejoy
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|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II
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|author=Wendy Williams
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=All sorts has happened to deceased famous people - stolen, sold, stuffed, etc. Bess Lovejoy has collected the fates of the celebrity deceased and tells them here - in a cracking little book that will be ideal as a stocking filler or small gift for those who enjoy slightly gruesome tales.
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|summary=Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall.  There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle.  One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life.  He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715648489</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=The Last Escaper
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|isbn=1980891117
|author=Peter Tunstall
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|title=G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart
 +
|author=John Webley
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Art
|summary=''The Last Escaper'' opens differently to many of the great escape biographies that were released soon after the war as it is told some 70 years later. Peter Tunstall was an RAF pilot who was shot down and spent many years as a Prisoner Of War across occupied Europe, including in Colditz.  He lived through the war, but also lived through many decades of peace.  Will these years of the relative quiet life lesson the tales of bravery and dare doing of the war?  Of course not!
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|summary=George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>071564923X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Shop Girls
 
|author=Elee Seymour
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=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>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1789016304
|author=Elizabeth Drew
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|title=War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam
|title=Washington Journal: reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's downfall
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|author=Melanie Martin
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=In early August 1974 I was in what was then Yugoslavia.  There was a group of us, all interested in the political news, but essentially cut off from the outside world apart from the previous day's English newspapers which arrived mid morning.  It was on the 11th of August that one of our number dashed onto the beach yelling ''He's resigned. He's RESIGNED!!!''  No one had any need to ask who he was talking aboutWe'd all been following the news about Richard Nixon's doings and wrongdoings for a year, with no one certain that he would be forced out of office.  The investigative journalism (oh, for the days when journalists uncovered rather than merely covered) was done by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, but some of the most insightful reportage came from Elizabeth Drew writing for ''The New Yorker''.
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|summary=Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupationMost people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect.  It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649167</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1908745819
|title=Golden Parasol
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|title=Surfacing
|author=Wendy Law-Yone
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|author=Kathleen Jamie
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=If you look her up Wendy Law-Yone is described as a Burmese-born American author.  That ''Burmese-born American'' might be an accurate description of her current citizenship, but it barely hints at the ethnic mix of her heritage, nor of her personal closeness (through her father) to her original homeland's struggle for freedom and democracy.
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|summary=Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why.  The blurb speaks of the author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.''  Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am.  Add to that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it.  It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually.  I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555999</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0857058320
|title=The Great War: The People's Story
+
|title=Lord Of All the Dead
|author=Isobel Charman
+
|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
|rating=5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=During this centenary year, 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 title, 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 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.
+
|summary=''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.  
 
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947255</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0008294011
|title=Elizabeth of York
+
|title=How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
|author=Alison Weir
+
|author=Ece Temelkuran
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Elizabeth of York could have ruled England were she not a woman and were she not born in the fifteenth century. Oldest daughter of Edward IV, she was the heiress of the Yorkist dynasty after the death of Richard III at Bosworth (and her own younger brothers in the Tower of London). Henry VII, the first Tudor king and victor by conquest, had at best a tenuous claim to the English throne. He legitimised it by his marriage to Elizabeth and proclaimed it through the Tudor rose, that joining of the emblems of York and Lancaster. Elizabeth's marriage to Henry produced one of our most famous kings in Henry VIII.
+
|summary=A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question ''Discuss the factors which led to...''  I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to. I think now that I do know.  We are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546477</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1788037812
|title=A Broken World: Letters, diaries and memories of the Great War
+
|title=The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908
|author=Sebastian Faulks and Hope Wolf
+
|author=Brian Anderson
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Sebastian Faulks and Dr Hope Wolf have expertly brought together this far-reaching collection of memories, diaries, letters and postcards written during and after the First World War. While Faulks is the author of novels such as ''Birdsong'' and ''Charlotte Gray'', Dr Hope Wolf is a research fellow in English at the University of Cambridge, whose doctoral research focused on archives at the Imperial War Museum. The combination of such a respected author, whose most famous (and arguably his best) novel is set in the First World War, and an academic whose expertise is the in the same area, means that this fascinating collection hits all the right notes. It's commemorative, poignant and very human.
+
|summary=Originally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091954223</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1910593508
|title=The Greatest Escape: How one French community saved thousands of lives from the Nazis
+
|title=Apollo
|author=Peter Grose
+
|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins
|rating=3
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|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 Schindler'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.
+
|summary=This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of this, the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to the book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and still felt too short.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886267</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1786331047
|title=The Mill Girls
+
|title=The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family
|author=Tracy Johnson
+
|author=Helen Rappaport
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=''The Mill Girls'' is a collection of true stories based on interviews with women who worked at Lancashire's cotton mills during the war years. Leaving school at the tender age of 14, the girls were thrown headlong into the world of work, at a time when jobs were plentiful and the benefits culture we know today was non-existent. The choice was a simple one: work or starve. Conditions were harsh, the mills noisy, dangerous and dirty and pay was low. Despite this, many of the women look back at their time 'in mill' with warm fondness and nostalgia.
+
|summary=The basic facts about the deaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have long since been established. For the last few months of their lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, their children and few remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. To prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to death in circumstances which, once the news was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in Europe.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091958288</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Money: The Unauthorised Biography
 
|author=Felix Martin
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Business and Finance
 
|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 a kind of biography or history of money through the ages.  The opening chapter, a brief sketch of the economy of the Pacific island of Yap and how it worked, seemed to confirm this.  It tells us how in the late nineteenth century Yap, east of the Philippine Islands, had an unwieldy coinage consisting of stone wheels around 12ft in diameter, called fei. 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>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On: Real-life stories from the Home Front
 
|author=Anton Rippon
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=My generation is now at saturation point with 'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters and all the accompanying variations. So much so, I was surprised to learn from this book 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, the government felt it would have been seen as patronising, given that Britons were doing exactly that without the government message to bolster them up.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178243190X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Home and Family Reviews]]
|title=Tudor: The Family Story
 
|author=Leanda de Lisle
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=With so many recent books published on various aspects of Tudor history, it becomes harder to find a new angle or approach to the subject.  Leanda de Lisle has thus pulled off the almost-impossible. Her starting point is not the battle of Bosworth and Henry Tudor’s claiming of the throne as King Henry VII in 1485, but an event nearly fifty years earlier, the death and funeral of Catherine de Valois.  The widow of King Henry V, Catherine married secondly the Welsh squire Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur, known to posterity as Owen Tudor.  Their elder son Edmund later married Margaret Beaufort, a descendant of John of Gaunt, one 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 of age, who would become the victor on Bosworth Field.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009955528X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 12:03, 20 March 2023

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Review of

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

5star.jpg Travel

Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it? Full Review

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Review of

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

4.5star.jpg History

Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the Phoney War. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in to save the day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was of vital significance in how the war played out. Full Review

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Review of

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

4star.jpg History

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

Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of the Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, told in a mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote. Full Review

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Review of

Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene

4star.jpg Confident Readers

We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. Kristallnacht happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about… Full Review

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Review of

The Search by John Henry Phillips

5star.jpg History

Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties? Full Review

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Review of

Flights for Freedom by Steven Burgauer

4.5star.jpg Historical Fiction

It's the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel. Full Review

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Review of

The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship by Nancy Carver

4.5star.jpg History

The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, the original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that wasn't the end of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in the grounds of Westminster College, the church was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill. Full Review

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Review of

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

5star.jpg History

What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. But some objects and images from that time may be less familiar to you. In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.  Full Review

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Review of

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

4.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know. I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989. Full Review

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Review of

Clara Colby: The International Suffragist by John Holliday

4star.jpg Biography

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

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Review of

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

5star.jpg History

It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscape. She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - a free-range child on the farm - and learned to spin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in her blood. Full Review

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Review of

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

4star.jpg History

Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942. Full Review

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Review of

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

4.5star.jpg Art

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

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Review of

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

5star.jpg History

Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in The Diary of Ann Frank but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies. Full Review

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Review of

Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie

5star.jpg History

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

0857058320.jpg

Review of

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

4star.jpg History

Lord Of All the Dead is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side. Full Review

0008294011.jpg

Review of

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

4.5star.jpg History

A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question Discuss the factors which led to... I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to. I think now that I do know. We are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth. Full Review

1788037812.jpg

Review of

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

5star.jpg History

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

1910593508.jpg

Review of

Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins

5star.jpg History

This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of this, the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to the book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and still felt too short. Full Review

1786331047.jpg

Review of

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

5star.jpg History

The basic facts about the deaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have long since been established. For the last few months of their lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, their children and few remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. To prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to death in circumstances which, once the news was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in Europe. Full Review

Move on to Newest Home and Family Reviews