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[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Treglown1785633457|title=Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=With ''Franco’s Crypt'' Jeremy Treglown has taken a highly charged subject – life in Spain under Franco – and placed it under what to some might appear a somewhat revisionist microscope. His aim appears to be twofoldCharging Around: to consider the nature of collective memory, particularly in the light of Exploring the exhumations Edges of mass graves that commenced earlier this century, and, secondly, to examine – and celebrate - Spain’s cultural output during Franco’s years as dictator.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784701157</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewEngland by Electric Car|author=Derek Niemann|title=A Nazi in the Family: The Hidden Story of an SS Family in Wartime GermanyClive Wilkinson

|genre=BiographyTravel|summary=I'm sure someone somewhere Clive Wilkinson has rewritten The Devil's Dictionary to include the following – ''family: noun; place where the greatest secrets are kept''a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. The Niemann family is no exception. It was long known that grandfather Karl was in Germany during As he neared his eightieth birthday the Second World War, people could easily work that out from idea of exploring the family biography. Yet little was spoken edges of, apart from him being England in an office-bound worker, either in logistics or financeelectric car was not totally outrageous. Since the War two of three surviving siblings had relocated to the Glasgow environsIn fact, and there was even it should be a family quip concerning Goebbels pleasant holiday for Clive and Gorbals (''family: noun; place where the worst things are spoken in the best way''). What was a surprise to our author, and many of his relativeswife, was that things were a lot closer to the former than had been expectedJoan, for Karl was such an office worker – for the SS. With a lot of family history finally out of the closet of silent mouths, and with incriminating photographic evidence revealed in unlikely ways, the whole truth can be known. But this is certainly not just of interest to that one small family.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780722222</amazonuk>shouldn't it?

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jessie ChildsB09BLBP3P8|title=GodNeville Chamberlain's TraitorsWar: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan EnglandHow Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager

|summary=It goes almost without saying that sixteenth-century England, at Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the height popular imagination of religious persecution, was a pretty perilous age. Queen Mary was notorious for the number early days of Protestants who were burnt at the stake for their beliefs during her fiveWorld War II from 1939-year reign. A belief widely held by many (depending on your religion40, known as likely as not) was that during the forty-five years that ‘Good Queen Bess’ reigned''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, greater toleration held swayand Churchill coming in to save the day. This has recently been disproved beyond doubt by several historiansVery little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, and as Frederic Seager argues in this book likewise helps to underline , it was of vital significance in how the savagery towards Catholics that was endemic under her rulewar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784700053</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Greene3756228711|title=Midnight in SiberiaCDC: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=It's no mistake that the cover of my edition of this book is a photo where the Trans-Siberian Railway is horizontal in the frame. It's well known for going east-west, left to right across the map of the largest country by far in the world. 9,288 kilometres from Moscow to the eastern stretches of Russia, it could only be a long, thin line across the cover, as it is in our imagination of it as a form of transport and a travel destination in its own right. So when this book mentions it as the spine or backbone of Russia The happy years with a couple of times, thatspectacular IT 's got to be of a prone Russia – one lying down, not upright or active. David Greene, a stalwart of northern American radio journalism, uses this book to see just how active or otherwise Russia and Russians are – and finds their lying down to be quite a definite verdict, as well as a slight indictment. ItPhenomena's no mistake either for this cover to have people in the frame alongside the train carriages, for the people met both riding and living alongside the tracks of the Railway are definitely the ribs of the piece.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846883709</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Stephen Bates|title=1815: Regency Britain in the Year of WaterlooHans Bodmer|rating=4.5

|summary=''The idea history of taking a pivotal year from the past and devoting a whole book 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 themeshort, embracing politicalbut explosive, social and military historyof the Control Data Company, is a very interesting one. Stephen Bates did so successfully not long ago with ‘Two Nations: Britain in 1846’CDC, and here for whom he does the same againworked. It's a fascinating tale, taking told in a step three decades backmixture of technological summary and wry anecdote.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781858217</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lena Mukhina Jeremy Dronfield and Amanda Love Darragh (translator)David Ziggy Greene|title=The Diary of Lena Mukhina: A Girl's Life in the Siege of LeningradFritz and Kurt

|genre=AutobiographyConfident Readers|summary=If life as a girl We start with the pair of school-leaving age is hard enoughbrothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, think about it when you're stuck doing things any Jewish lad in a great city under a horrendous siege. Lena Mukhina's diary only covers half 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the 800-odd days empty market place, helping the nightmare in Leningrad lastedneighbours, but so palpably singular were the circumstances that being dutiful when it feels like one is given comes to the clearest insight into what it was like, courtesy of these pagessynagogue choir and at a vocational school. IKurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours've been there and never felt each Friday night – the ghost of the siege in the modern St Petersburg, Sabbath preventing them for using anything like (for example) the ruination of Warsaw had lived onnearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. But a dreadful this is the time this was. At just before the peak times Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of Nazi oppression and aerial bombinghaving a national vote to keep the Nazis out, the city lost 2 or 3 residentsinvite them in with open arms. ' lives ''every minuteKristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of the day on averageJews. The city was desperate for fuelThese 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 food – his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and this is a place where it can – and does here – snow in Junethe stone quarry there. Without giving too much of And us wondering how the titular event for the diet away, it's notable that later on Lena dreams adult variant of having a menagerie of small animals to live with – but no dogs or cats.all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144726987X</amazonuk>024156574X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jerry WhiteJohn Henry Phillips|title=Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World WarThe Search

|summary=It seems that only recentlyArchaeology cannot be child's play, with when you're scraping in the centenary 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 outbreak latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the First World War upon ustitular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, that historians have really looked thoroughly at the social history aspect target might not exist any more – oh, and the effect it had 's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the population at home. Jerry Whiteheroic old man's visit back to France, who our author has already made a study of London over promised to find the last three centuries or so in previous titleslanding craft that delivered him to Normandy, now turns his attention and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to life in erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the capital during those momentous four yearsvast majority of whom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099556049</amazonuk>1472146182

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David EsterlyB09F4CTKJR|title=The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of MakingFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyHistorical Fiction|summary=Bouncing between his studio in upstate New York and the sites of various English sojourns, woodcarver David EsterlyIt's seems to be an idyllic existence. Yet it's not all cosy cottages in the snow later stages of World War I and watching geese the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and coyotes when he looks up from his workbenchjoined the 17 Aero Squadron. There is an element of hard-won retreat from This company was the trials of life first US Aero Squadron to be trained in this memoirCanada, but at the same time there is an argument for first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be sent into the essential difficulty of skies to fight the artist's lifeGermans in active combat. 'Carvers are starversBut before that can happen,' a wizened English carver once told him. Certainly there is no great fortune Petrol has to be won from a profession as obscure as limewood carving, master flying the notoriously difficult but the rewards outweigh the hard graft for Esterlymajestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649191</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emma Tennant, Hilary Bailey and David Elliott0578761718|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 The Inspiring History 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>}}{{newreviewSpecial Relationship|author=John Van der Kiste|title=The Prussian Princesses: The Sisters of Kaiser Wilhelm IINancy Carver

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=Kaiser Wilhelm II is well known and not for The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the best City of reasons and he's certainly over-shadowed his six younger siblingsLondon from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, John Van der Kiste's first biography the original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of his father, Kaiser Friedrich III London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and he has also written about Emperor Wilhelm then survived for centuries until World War II so he is well placed to write about , when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that wasn't the three youngest children Kaiser Friedrich and Victoriaend of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, Princess Royal. Originally he intended to write about Friedrichthe stones from the church's second daughterwalls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, but it quickly became obvious that in the most satisfying biography - for reader and author - would be a biography grounds of VictoriaWestminster College, Sophie the church was rebuilt and Margaret, their mother's ''kleebatt'' or trio, today serves as they were knowna memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00QKROC9W</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Richard Weight1784385166|title=MODThe Third Reich in 100 Objects: From Bebop to Britpop, Britain's Biggest Youth MovementA Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse

|summary=''Mod'' is arguably a rather-overused term. First of all, there What is the matter first image that comes to mind when you think of establishing a precise definition. ''Modernism'', which was soon abbreviated for convenience, began as the working-class movement of Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a newly affluent nation. Once the age concentration camp? None of immediate post-war austerity was gone, the cult these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of a youth keen to shake off the drab conformity of life Third Reich's fascist regime in 1950s Britain took holdall its iniquity. It was more than anything else an amalgam of American music But some objects and European fashionsimages from that time may be less familiar to you. In this short volume, beginning as a popular cult and gradually becoming a mainstream cultureRoger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099597888</amazonuk> 

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stian Bromark Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Hon Khiam Leong Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=Massacre in NorwayTiananmen 1989: The 2011 Terror Attack on Oslo and the Utoya Youth CampOur Shattered Hopes|rating=24.5|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=Anders Behring Breivik I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was 32 when he both planted a van bomb in Oslo's central government district to hit playing out at what he thought was 'Cultural Marxism', which killed 8, then left for an island – someone in a lake 24 miles awaythe second half of their teens has other priorities, where a notably political youth gathering was enjoying itselfyou know. He gunned down 69 people – more than one in ten I certainly didn't know of the weeks of those at protests and hunger strikes from the camp – students before the massacre and wounded many scores more. He also spammed countless people with another the birth of his projectsthe Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a lengthy manifesto declaring his ideas about Islamisation venue for political protest, and what he saw as I didn't know more than a pernicious multiculturalism ruining his country. His case was one of spit about the more superlative events in modern Nordic history – as was the surprisingly lenient sentence for over 70 lives of just 21 yearspeople involved on either side. This book is, as youpractically flawless in giving a general browser'd expect, one s context for the whole season of the many books to result from the caseprotests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1612346685</amazonuk>1684056993

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dan Jones0648684806|title=Magna CartaClara Colby: 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>}}{{newreviewInternational Suffragist|author=Iain Gately|title=Rush HourJohn Holliday

|genre=HistoryBiography|summary=Rush Hour. 500 Million commuters go through it every day, and itThe path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's hard life was probably determined when her family emigrated to avoid the USA. At the time she was just three- whether like me you're a jaded Londoner stuck in someoneyears-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn's armpit whilst attempting t allowed to read sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a cramped tubegood education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, or trying to navigate busy country lanes her family had become pioneer farmers in order the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to do the school run find out when she and get her grandparents eventually went to work on timejoin the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, we've probably all experienced itseven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. But have you ever thought about As the history of it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781854068</amazonuk>eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Evans1783784350|title=Merchant AdventurersThis Golden Fleece: The Voyage of Discovery that Transformed Tudor England A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter|rating=4.5

|summary=We tend It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to associate 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 golden age length and breadth of global navigation the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and exploration with telling the Elizabethan age story of wool's history and such luminaries as Drake, Raleigh how it had made and Hawkinschanged the landscape. This book does us all She'd grown up on a service sheep farm in reminding us of Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the original pioneersfarm'' - and learned to spin, whom they overshadowed knit and weave from her mother and who seem less well-remembered these daysher mother's friend. This was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780221029</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emma Marriott1789017977|title=A History of the Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World in NumbersWar II|author=Wendy Williams

|summary=Make no mistake, this book does what it says on Ronnie Williams was the coverson of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. That also goes There's some doubt as to say that it is ''whether or not'' A History of the World ''of'' Numbers, they were ever married or A History of the Worldeven Harry's Numbers birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and what they he might mean, as other books providewell have shaved a few years off his age. This is For a primer of while the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the world's history, right 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from the earliest days of civilisation up his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the close of World War Two, army at eighteen in handy bite-sized chunks, where the headline data can be given using a number1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782432175</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1980891117|title=Serving the ReichG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: The Struggle for A year in the Soul life of Physics under HitlerGeorge Engleheart|author=Philip BallJohn Webley

|genre=HistoryArt|summary=Picture yourself in Nazi Germany, at any time George Engleheart was one 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 leading portrait miniaturists of the Nazi regime? Do you do anything about thisGeorgian London, or are you aware of the problems with a career lasting from the country has had due 1770s to losing the Great War and having Regency era. He was also one of 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 inmost prolific, saypainting nearly 5, physics000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Do you again work purely for your own ends? For Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the country's – knowing all about its rulers? Or can you segregate your bosses and their leaders from your needsnames of each of his clients, 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 subsequently transcribed them into what was going on at that timeis referred to as his fee book. Which way did Planck walk? Did Heisenberg have principles?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581647</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1789016304|title=SlideshowWar and Love: Memories A family's testament of a Wartime Childhoodanguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Marjorie Ann WattsMelanie Martin|rating=3.5

|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 ''SlideshowThe Diary of Ann Frank''but then realised that her own family' may seem an unusual title for a book about growing up s stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the Second World Warwar years, but author Marjorie Ann Watts is quick 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 explain why it was chosenGerman occupation. Her job as a book illustrator and artist requires astute observation skills and she has what 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 known as a 'photographic memory'pushed back, or a gift for recalling specific scenes from her past that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in great detail. She explains it this the way: 'All I have to do is pull a 'slide' from the accumulated silt of memory...there that it is: a varnish-clear image as vivid did, but initial protests melted away as the day it was recorded, however long agoorganisers became more circumspect. It'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373599</amazonuk>s an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1908745819|title=Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing FieldsSurfacing|author=Wendy LowerKathleen Jamie|rating=3.5

|summary=If one were to describe the Nazi regime with Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this onehas your name on it''s own adjectives. Mostly we take them at their word, I'm sure that sooner or laternot, after all the ruder and more pejorative emotional ones had been but rarely do we ask them why they thought of, so unless it turns out that we didn'masculine' would come upt like the book. LetThat's face it, it would be a scholar rare experience. People who could are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name any leading female Nazis beyond Eva Braun and Mrs Goebbels, who nobody rarely get it wrong. In this case, I think has ever put at the forefront of actual policy, thinking or actionswas told why. But there were females at the front – many thousands, it seems, taking themselves away from Germany with ideas The blurb speaks of the author considering ''Lebensraum'' being opened up out East; moving their skills as either secretaryan older, nurse, teacher or just willing less tethered sense of herself.''Hausfrau' Older. Less tethered. That' s not a bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the occupied territoriesnatural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, where… wellabout connection. Of course, that this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would be tellinghave found its way to me eventually. This book is the one I am pleased to read if you want that told, but have it doesn't do it in the most brilliant wayfall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099572281</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Hitler's Last Witness: The Memoirs of Hitler's Bodyguard0857058320|authortitle=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 Lord Of All 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>}}{{newreviewDead|title=The Making of Home|author=Judith Flanders|rating=4.5|genre=Lifestyle|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 Baum. Nevertheless he had put into words something which many people deeply felt but had not yet expressed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877986</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|title=Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived Javier Cercas and Will Never Die|author=Alex WernerAnne McLean (translator)

|summary=It has been over 125 years since ''Lord Of All the first Sherlock Holmes story was written and since then, Dead'' is a journey to uncover the character has been subject to countless interpretations on stage, screen author's lost ancestor's life and in literaturedeath. Such was Cercas is searching for the popularity of meaning behind his great uncle's death in the famous detective, that his creator, Sir Arthur Conan DoyleSpanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, attempted on more than one occasion to 'free himselfCercas' from Holmesgreat uncle, is the most notable example being his 'deathfigure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco' at Reichenbach Fallss forces. Readers were most upset and Doyle eventually bowed to public pressure, reviving the eponymous hero Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for further adventuresthis dictator. In The question at the years that followed, Holmes took on a life independent centre of this book is whether it is possible for his author, as his stories were adapted great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought 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 himwrong side.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091958725</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008294011|title=WitchesHow to Lose a Country: James I and the English Witch HuntsThe 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Tracy BormanEce Temelkuran

|summary=Gossip is as old as human nature, but generally harmless. It was A little while ago a different matter friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in medieval times, years to come would be discussed by A level history students when what might start as relatively innocuous tittle-tattle could breed suspicion, paranoia, and ultimately accusations against women and girls of witchcraftfaced with the question ''Discuss the factors which led to... '' More often than not, I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it would end in was a horrible death by execution - drowning, strangulation on the gallows, good or being burned alivebad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to. The unsavoury business I think now that I do know. We are in danger of witchcraft trials in early seventeenth-century England was encouraged by King James losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system Ican't think of a better one, who with his obsession with and knowledge of particularly as 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'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954914X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1788037812|title=Rest The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in PiecesEngland, 1891-1908|author=Bess LovejoyBrian Anderson|rating=45

|summary=All sorts has happened to deceased famous people 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- stolensex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, soldthree books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, stuffedas 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, etc. Bess Lovejoy has collected so the fates publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the celebrity deceased scientific understanding of homosexuality, and tells them here beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of same- sex relationships in a cracking little book that will be ideal as a stocking filler or small gift for those who enjoy slightly gruesome tales1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715648489</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1910593508|title=The Last EscaperApollo|author=Peter TunstallMatt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins|rating=4.5

|summary=''The Last Escaper'' opens differently This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to many of the great escape biographies that were released soon after Moon landings and the passion for the war as it subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is told some 70 years later. Peter Tunstall was an RAF pilot who was shot down a story we know well and spent many years as because of this, the authors take a Prisoner Of War across occupied Europe, including few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in Colditzthe blanks. He lived through These shortcuts are the only downside to the war, but also lived through many decades of peacebook. Will these years If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the relative quiet life lesson the tales of bravery 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 dare doing of the war? Of course not!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>071564923X</amazonuk>still felt too short.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1786331047|title=The Shop GirlsRace to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Elee SeymourHelen Rappaport|rating=45

|summary=Heyworth's Department Store. The chances arebasic facts about the deaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, you have never heard some of it before. I know that I hadn't, before I picked up this book. And yet, there was a which were deliberately obscured at the timefor various reasons, not so have long ago, when everyone in Cambridge would have since been familiar with Heyworth's, even if they couldn't afford to shop there themselvesestablished. Smaller than most department stores, it offered high-end fashionFor the last few months of their lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, childrenswear their children and millinery, with a staff of smilingfew remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, smartly-dressed sales assistants ready to cater to the customer's every whimhumiliating captivity. It seems sad that with the passing of generationsTo prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the very existence of the store seems revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to have slipped away from death in circumstances which, once the collective consciousness; ask most people news was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in Cambridge if they remember Heyworth's and the majority response would be negativeEurope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751554960</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Elizabeth Drew|title=Washington Journal: reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's downfall|rating=5|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 Move 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 about. We'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 [[Newest Home and Bob Woodward, but some of the most insightful reportage came from Elizabeth Drew writing for ''The New Yorker''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649167</amazonuk>}}Family Reviews]]