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[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith Jeffery1785633457|title=1916Charging Around: A Global HistoryExploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryTravel|summary=1916 was Clive Wilkinson has a pivotal year in modern historyof travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. It witnessed the Easter Rising in Dublin, As he neared his eightieth birthday the battles idea of Verdun and the Somme, and exploring the election edges of Woodrow Wilson as American President. These, and several other events described England in this book in detail, were later seen as crucial staging points in the course of the First World War.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408834308</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Gary Cox|title= Deep Thought: 42 Fantastic Quotes that Define Philosophy |rating= 4an electric car was not totally outrageous.5|genre= History|summary= Who really knows what ''Cogito ergo sum'' means? YesIn fact, you may know that Descartes said it, and that it translates as 'I think, therefore I am', but what was it the French philosopher was trying to say about human existence when he said this most quotable should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and definitive phrase? Andhis wife, for that matterJoan, shouldn''where'' did he say t it? Was it in the seventeenth century or the eighteenth? If these are the sort of question that keep you awake at night, then Gary Cox's ''Deep Thought: 42 Fantastic Quotes that Define Philosophy'' will be a welcome addition to your library. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472567269</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kevin FludeB09BLBP3P8|title=Divorced, Beheaded, Died...Neville Chamberlain's War: The History of How Great Britain's Kings and Queens in BiteOpposed Hitler, 1939-Sized Chunks1940|author=Frederic Seager

|summary=History livesReceived wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. Proof of that sweeping statement can be had in this book, and in One such is the fact that while it only reached scrubbing from the grand old age popular imagination of six, it has had the dust brushed off it and has been reprinted – and while the present royal incumbent it ends its main narrative with has not changed, other things have. This has quietly been updated to include the reburial early days of Richard III in Leicester, and seems to have been rereleased at a perfectly apposite timeWorld War II from 1939-40, known as only the week before I write these words the Queen has surpassed all those who came before her as our longest serving ruler''Phoney War''. Such details may be trivia to some – especially those of us of a more royalist bent – We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and important facts Churchill coming in to otherssave the day. The perfect balance of that coupling – trivia Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and detail – is what makes yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book so worthwhile, it was of vital significance in how the war played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782434631</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Emma Marriott3756228711|title= I Used to Know ThatCDC: HistoryThe happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans Bodmer|rating= 4|genre= Politics and SocietyHistory|summary= I've picked up a few things over 'The history of the years, most notably from English language text development of IT could fill books while TEFLing abroad (thereof several hundred pages.''s nothing like an exciting lesson on Guy Fawkes to have a classroom of Mexicans wondering why we so love to celebrate a terrorist attack  Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that didn't happen). But I have gapsHe has chosen to tell us about the short, of this I am surebut explosive, and I thought to get a basic understanding history ofthe Control Data Company, wellCDC, the basics that we all should knowfor whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, told in a quick read mixture of this book wouldn't hurttechnological summary and wry anecdote.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782434488</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Bruce HugmanJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title= Out of BoundsFritz and Kurt|rating= 4|genre= AutobiographyConfident Readers|summary= Author Bruce Hugman has been a school teacherWe start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, probation officerand their muckers, smallholderdoing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, university lecturerhelping the neighbours, PR Professional, is an international communications consultant being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and teacher in healthcare 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 patient safetyworkmanlike as a light switch. Having nursed two partners through But this is the time just before the final stages Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of AIDShaving a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, and survived as did all the 2004 Asian Tsunamiround-ups of Jews. A varied These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and interesting life then – sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and it is his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the first thirty years of it that Hugman chooses same train to concentrate on hereBuchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1508423709</amazonuk>024156574X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christopher DellJohn Henry Phillips|title=Mythology: An Illustrated Journey Into Our Imagined WorldsThe Search|rating=5|genre=History|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?|isbn=1472146182}}{{Frontpage|isbn= B09F4CTKJR|title= Flights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer

|genre=Spirituality and ReligionHistorical Fiction|summary=What does a rainbow mean to you? How would you explain It's the creation later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the world if you had no science as such, or conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the changing of 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the seasons? What other kinds of natures – chaotic trickeryfirst US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, evil personae or even the characteristics of goats – people your world? And why is it that first to be attached to the answers man RAF and woman have collectively formed the first to such questions have been so similar across be sent into the oceans and across skies to fight the centuries? This highly pictorial volume looks at the mythologies Germans in active combat. But before that formed those answerscan happen, and locks on Petrol has to a multitude of subjects – blood, music, godly activity – to show us what has followedmaster flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0500291519</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Caroline Moorehead0578761718|title=Village The Inspiring History of Secretsa Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver|rating=34.5

|summary=''Village The church of Secrets'' is an account St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of resistance (with a small 'r') and rescue London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, the original church was destroyed in a series the Great Fire of small villages scattered across the Vivarais-Lignon plateau London in Vichy France1666. Residents of these villages harboured It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a number of peopledesign by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, many when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that wasn't the end of them childrenits story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, many of them Jews, seeking to avoid deportation the stones from the church's walls were transported to concentration campsFulton, at great personal riskMissouri. There have been other accounts of this chapter in French history and, of course, a great many books about Vichy France in general. However, ''Village the grounds of Secrets'' is, perhapsWestminster College, the most detailed, much of it based on primary sources (interviews with both rescuers church was rebuilt and the rescued, or their families), backed up by extensive documentary researchtoday serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009955464X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Finn and Petra Couvee1784385166|title=The Zhivago AffairThird Reich in 100 Objects: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden BookA Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=One What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the many things Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to come out a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of this incredibly clear the Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. But some objects and readable book is images from that we Brits, for all our literary heritage, have got nothing like an equivalent time may be less familiar to Boris Pasternakyou. He or she would have In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to sell like Rowling, regularly capture illustrate the enjoyment and spirit period of the nation a la Danny Boyle's Olympics ceremoniesThird Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts. }}{{Frontpage|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and at Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=I never really followed the same time have events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the cultural heft second half of Larkin, Rushdietheir teens has other priorities, Graham Greene and more combinedyou know. Someone connected with choosing recipients I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the Nobel Prize declare him here to be birth of the Soviet TS EliotTank Man image, but thatI didn's nothing like. So t know how the reader probably has to stretch herself to see someone so well-respected and well-loved area had long been a venue for his versepolitical protest, who spent twelve years and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a huge, society-defining novel, only general browser's context for the country to nix every plan to get it publishedwhole season of protests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099581345</amazonuk>1684056993

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ingrid von Oelhafen and Tim Tate0648684806|title=Hitler's Forgotten ChildrenClara Colby: My Life Inside the LebensbornThe International Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|genre=AutobiographyBiography|summary=You see that name that credits the author The path of this book? Forget it, itClara Dorothy Bewick's not accuratelife was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. (I don't mean Tim Tate's workmanlike, journalistic ghost writing, more At the time she was just three-years-old but because of which later.) The narrator of this book did change her name by deed poll to something like Ingrid von Oelhafen some time agochildhood ailment, but not exactly how she wantedwasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. She grew up as Ingrid von OelhafenInstead, although that was the name of she remained with her fathergrandparents, who was so desperately absentdoted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in being over a generation older than his wife, with whom he was separatedand out of school. She might well have had her mother's maiden name if her parents had divorced – was the only child in the household and indeed her mother did move on to have a second familychildhood was glorious. By contrast, and was terribly distant herself – young Ingrid would plead and plead for her company while family had become pioneer farmers in a remote children's home, and a lot the mid-west of family secrets were not passed down at opportune times. Oh, the United States and legally, due to what little documentation life was to be seenhard, such as immunisation record cards, Ingrid Clara was not Ingrid at all, but Erika Matko. Through this book, we to find out when she was not blood-kin with and her brother, grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her step-brother was to die, mother for a few months: she was not blood-kin with her sistermarried for fifteen years, but was her brother's, – ohhad ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and even died in this day and age you can still find a changeling foundlingchildbirth not long after Clara arrived. Such incredibly convoluted family trees are As the fault of the Lebensborneldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783961201</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Francis O'Gorman1783784350|title= WorryingThis Golden Fleece: A Literary and Cultural Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= ‘’Worrying: A Literary 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 Cultural History’’ begins with even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be a familiar scene time for anyone who experiences making changes and she decided that persistent feeling she would travel the length and breadth of fretful panic: lying awake 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 early hours, unable farm'' - and learned to switch offspin, thoughts turning over in your headknit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. If this common situation hits home, ‘This book’, its author Francis O’Gorman writes, ‘is for youThis was in her blood.’|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144115129X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Loades1789017977|title=The Seymours of Wolf HallRonnie and Hilda's Romance: A Tudor Family StoryTowards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= In medieval times Wolf Hall Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or Wolfhall (not they were ever married or even Wulfhall)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 longfamily was quite well-sinceto-demolished family seat do but disaster struck in Wiltshire, was the home of the Seymour family1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. Their greatest triumph, followed by a speedy decline and fall, One thing he did inherit from his father was part of Tudor history, his need to be well-turned-out and is thus this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the focus of this bookarmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445634953</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Philip Parker1980891117|title= The Northmen’s FuryG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A History of the Viking World|rating= 4|genre= History|summary= In AD793, the Vikings arrived on our shores. Bringing death and destruction, they sacked the island monastery of Lindisfarne. Bloodthirsty warriors, they soon descended on northern Europe. However, for all their reputation as terrible and brutal thugs, year in the Vikings possessed a culture that was far more sophisticated than they are often given credit for, producing art, literature and long lasting kingdoms. Philip Parker describes how these people came to rule over much life of Europe for nearly three centuries, in this fascinating and intriguing read. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551845</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewGeorge Engleheart|author=Simon Wilcox|title=Mudlark River: Down the Thames with a Victorian Map John Webley

|genre=TravelArt|summary=Do you think finding George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a 19th century map would inspire you career lasting from the 1770s to walk the entire length Regency era. He was also one of the Thames? Because most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that's time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what Simon Wilcox didis referred to as his fee book. I think there's something impossibly romantic about that, don't you?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993016308</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Williams1789016304|title=The Trains Now DepartedWar and Love: Sixteen Excursions into the Lost Delights of BritainA family's Railwaystestament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating=3.5

|summary=Beaching wasnMelanie 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''t 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 buffer 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 fate of various train lines of our land – it occupation could have been sheer managerial incompetence, the birth of the package air holiday, or never happen: even road-builders' bloody-minded spite those who thought that served to bring down the end of Germans might reach the line. Yescity were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the fact you can easily pepper your words with idiom from Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the world of trains shows how important they have been over the last two hundred yearsway that it did, and this book is geared around that but initial protests melted away as well, if happily cliché-freethe organisers became more circumspect. Our author takes us It's an atrocity on a journey around various sites where train lines and elements vast scale but made up of tens of what once rode proudly upon them have been and gone. So grab a platform ticket (RIP) and see what class thousands of journey we're travelling inindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848094353</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John George Freeman and Ronnie Scott (editor)1908745819|title=Three Men and a Bradshaw|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=This book is quite the very time machine, and because of that some of its own history is needed in summary. A year or two ago, our presenter Shaun Sewell was buying some private documents from the descendants of John George Freeman, to complete a set of illustrated travel journals he'd met with when risking a punt on the first few at auction. He was intent on getting them published since finding them, and seemed to be the first person with that desire since they were first written in the 1870s. Back then they were well-written, educative and entertaining looks at the early days of the travel industry, when for example piers were novel(ty) ways for the rail companies to justify sending people to the ends of the country where previously there had been little for them to do. Here then is railwayana, travel and social history, all between two covers. So even if this doesn't find the perfectly huge audience of some books, it will certainly raise interest in many households.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947441</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSurfacing|author= Steven Nightingale|title= Granada: The Light of Andalucia|rating=4 |genre= History |summary= Don't expect (as I did) a ''Parrot-in-the-Pepper-Tree'' type collection of comedic mishaps and tales about the joys -- and perils -- of joining a new community. This is, more than anything, a history book, albeit one in which the writer's deep love of his adopted home (Granada and, more specifically, the Albayzín, the district he lives in), his family and his neighbours makes every sentence sparkle. Even better, it's a history book that assumes no knowledge on the part of the reader. Steven Nightingale covers centuries of events in Spain, describing them with clarity and in a typically engaging style. He starts with the Moorish occupation of Spain in 711 and ends post-Civil War. Despite its vast chronological span, the book is more than a dry recounting of events and dates. Yes, that information is there, as befits any good history book. But Steven Nightingale's focus is more on the effects of these historical events, and the achievements of the times, particularly the ongoing legacy of the Moorish occupation. He writes in detail about Arabic poetry, the timeless nature of love, developments in maths, science and the arts, geometry in tiling, and much more.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886313</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Paul O'Keeffe|title=Waterloo: The AftermathKathleen Jamie|rating=4.5

|summary=There have been several accounts of the battle of Waterloo and of the events Sometimes when people suggest that led up to you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. But Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it is always interesting turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to discover hearing a book which finds 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 different way bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of telling the talepoetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, or in this case focusing more book had my name on what happened directly afterwardsit. 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>0099563797</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Buk-Swienty0857058320|title=1864: The forgotten war that shaped modern EuropeLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

|summary=The brief but bloody clash of arms between Denmark ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and Prussia which took place death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in 1864 has never been regarded as one of the major 19th century European warsSpanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, and I cannot recall having ever seen a single volume devoted to it so faris the figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. In Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this book, which forms dictator. The question at the basis centre of a new TV drama series, Tom Buk-Swienty has done us a service in reminding us that this book is whether it had is possible for his great uncle to be a far greater political impact than we may have appreciatedhero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781252769</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Treglown0008294011|title=Franco's CryptHow to Lose a Country: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran|rating=34.5

|summary=With 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 ''Franco’s CryptDiscuss the factors which led to...'' Jeremy Treglown has taken a highly charged subject – life in Spain under Franco – I agreed that she was right and placed wasn't certain whether it under was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to some might appear a somewhat revisionist microscope. His aim appears to be twofold: to consider the nature of collective memory, particularly I think now that I do know. We are in the light danger of the exhumations losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of mass graves that commenced earlier this centurya better one, and, secondly, to examine – and celebrate - Spain’s cultural output during Franco’s years particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784701157</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Derek Niemann1788037812|title=A Nazi in The Fraternity of the FamilyEstranged: The Hidden Story of an SS Family Fight for Homosexual Rights in Wartime GermanyEngland, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson

|summary=It goes almost without saying Originally passed in 1885, the law that sixteenthhad made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-century Englandsex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, at three books on the height nature of religious persecution, was a pretty perilous agehomosexuality appeared. Queen Mary was notorious for the number of Protestants who They were burnt at the stake for their beliefs during her five-year reign. A belief widely held written by many (depending on your religiontwo homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as likely well as not) the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was that during common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the forty-five years that ‘Good Queen Bess’ reignedUK, greater toleration held sway. This has recently been disproved beyond doubt by several historiansso the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and this book likewise helps beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to underline the savagery towards Catholics that was endemic under her rulemilestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784700053</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Greene1910593508|title=Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of RussiaApollo|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summaryauthor=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 a couple of times, that's got to be of a prone Russia – one lying down, not upright or active. David Greene, a stalwart of northern American radio journalismMatt Fitch, uses this book to see just how active or otherwise Russia Chris Baker and Russians are – and finds their lying down to be quite a definite verdict, as well as a slight indictment. It'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 WaterlooMike Collins|rating=4.5

|summary=The idea of taking This incredible graphic novel is a pivotal year from love letter to the past Moon landings and devoting a whole book to the theme, embracing politicalpassion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, social Chris Baker and military history, Mike Collins. This is a very interesting one. Stephen Bates did so successfully not long ago with ‘Two Nations: Britain in 1846’story we know well and because of this, and here he does the same again, taking authors take a step three decades back.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781858217</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Lena Mukhina and Amanda Love Darragh (translator)|title=The Diary of Lena Mukhina: A Girl's Life few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the Siege of Leningrad|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=If life as a girl of school-leaving age is hard enough, think about it when you're stuck in a great city under a horrendous siegeblanks. Lena Mukhina's diary These shortcuts are the only covers half downside to the 800-odd days the nightmare in Leningrad lasted, but so palpably singular were the circumstances that it feels like one is given the clearest insight into what it was like, courtesy of these pagesbook. IIf you've been there and never felt the ghost ever read a comic book adaptation of the siege in the modern St Petersburg, anything like (for example) the ruination of Warsaw had lived on. But a dreadful time this was. At film you will be familiar with the peak times of Nazi oppression slight feeling that there are scenes missing and aerial bombing, the city lost 2 or 3 residents' lives ''every minute'' of the day on averagethat dialogue has been trimmed. The city was desperate for fuel, and food – and this This is a place where it can – graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and does here – snow in June. Without giving still felt too much of the diet away, it's notable that later on Lena dreams of having a menagerie of small animals to live with – but no dogs or catsshort.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144726987X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jerry White1786331047|title=Zeppelin NightsThe Race to Save the Romanovs: London in The Truth Behind the First World WarSecret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport

|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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099556049</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=David Esterly|title=The Lost Carving: A Journey to basic facts about the Heart deaths of Making|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Bouncing between his studio in upstate New York Nicholas and the sites of various English sojournsAlexandra, 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 some of hard-won retreat from the trials of life in this memoir, but which were deliberately obscured 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=Essentiallyvarious reasons, 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 publishingsince been established. This unashamed nostalgia provides For the focus last few months of the book and allows the writers to recount numerous anecdotes from their days lives in Russia the publishing business. Whilst the primary audience for this book may well be students of creative writing former Tsar and media studiesTsarina, 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 selftheir children and few remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, much like a lot of manufacturinghumiliating captivity. Because of thisTo prevent them from being rescued, I was disappointed that no space was given to a consideration of how in July 1918 the rise of the e-book revolutionary regime had them all shot and Kindle has directly damaged both the sale of books and the potential for new books bayoneted 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 artifactsdeath in circumstances which, once 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|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 news 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 Margaretconfirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their mother's ''kleebatt'' or trio, as they were knownrelatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00QKROC9W</amazonuk>