Difference between revisions of "Newest History Reviews"

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[[Category:History|*]]
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alison Maloney
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|isbn=1785633457
|title=Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants
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|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car
 +
|author=Clive Wilkinson
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Travel
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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?
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{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=B09BLBP3P8
 +
|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940
 +
|author=Frederic Seager
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Life in Edwardian times is currently a popular subject, thanks in no small part to ''that'' period drama currently showing its final series on ITV. ''Life Below Stairs'' examines the subject in greater detail, looking at documents and memoirs from the time to discover what life was really like for those in service. We learn about the strict hierarchy in the household and the duties expected of each individual. We see how much each member of staff was paid and how workers were hired (and in many cases, fired) from their positions. Welcome to a slice of Edwardian life, served up with a delicious mix of period illustrations and newspaper clippings
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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>1782434356</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Lucy Adlington
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|isbn=3756228711
|title= Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear
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|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
 +
|author=Hans Bodmer
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre= History
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|genre=History
|summary=''Stitches in Time'' is a lively history of clothing. Riffling through the wardrobes of years gone by, costume historian Lucy Adlington reveals the stories underneath the clothes we wear in this tour of the history of fashion, ranging from ancient times to the present day. With beautiful illustrations and full colour photographs, ''Stitches in Time'' is a reminder of how the way we dress is inextricably bound up with considerations of aesthetics, sex, gender, class and lifestyle – and offers the reader the chance to appreciate the extraordinary qualities of the clothing we wear, and the rich history it has led.  
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|summary=''The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947263</amazonuk>
+
 
 +
Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of the Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, told in a mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote.  
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Jeffrey James
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|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene
|title= Edward IV: Glorious Son of York
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|title=Fritz and Kurt
|rating= 4.5
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|rating=4
|genre= History
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= Medieval England's own game of thrones, The Wars of the Roses, was at the centre of a turbulent ageIn retrospect much of the history of medieval England, between the Norman conquest and the advent of the Tudors, seems to have been a chronicle of instability often verging on and sometimes erupting into rebellion or civil warThe fifteenth-century conflicts between the houses of Lancaster and York, lasting intermittently for thirty years, were more protracted and even more brutal than the rest, with several fierce battles and sudden changes of fortune for the two rival families, both descended from King Edward IIIThe rise, fall and rise again of King Edward IV was a constant theme of the wars.
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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 switchBut 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 JewsThese 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 thereAnd us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445646218</amazonuk>
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|isbn=024156574X
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Dan Jones
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|author=John Henry Phillips
|title= Realm Divided: A Year in the Life of Plantagenet England
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|title=The Search
|rating= 4.5
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|rating=5
|genre= History
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|genre=History
|summary= 1215 has gone down in history as the year of Magna Carta, the result of King John's increasingly discontented barons attempts to exert control over their wayward and stubborn monarch. John had succeeded to the throne of England in 1199, at the end of an often turbulent century.  His father, Henry II, had succeeded in restoring the authority of the crown after almost twenty years of civil war between the supporters of two rival claimants to the kingdom. He had inherited a challenging set on both sides of the Channel, and within four years had been driven out of most of the French ones, notably the duchy of Normandy. Posterity would bestow on him the unflattering nicknames 'John Softsword' and later 'John Lackland'.
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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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781858829</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1472146182
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Keith Jeffery
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|isbn= B09F4CTKJR
|title=1916: A Global History
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|title= Flights for Freedom
|rating= 4.5
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|author= Steven Burgauer
|genre= History
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|rating=4.5
|summary=1916 was a pivotal year in modern history.  It witnessed the Easter Rising in Dublin, the battles of Verdun and the Somme, and the election of Woodrow Wilson as American President. These, and several other events described in this book in detail, were later seen as crucial staging points in the course of the First World War.
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|genre=Historical Fiction
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408834308</amazonuk>
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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.
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Gary Cox
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|isbn=0578761718
|title= Deep Thought: 42 Fantastic Quotes that Define Philosophy
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|title=The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship
|rating= 4.5
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|author=Nancy Carver
|genre= History
 
|summary= Who really knows what ''Cogito ergo sum'' means? Yes, 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 and definitive phrase? And, for that matter, ''where'' did he say 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>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kevin Flude
 
|title=Divorced, Beheaded, Died...: The History of Britain's Kings and Queens in Bite-Sized Chunks
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=History lives.  Proof of that sweeping statement can be had in this book, and in the fact that while it only reached the grand old age 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 of Richard III in Leicester, and seems to have been rereleased at a perfectly apposite time, as only the week before I write these words the Queen has surpassed all those who came before her as our longest serving ruler.  Such details may be trivia to some – especially those of us of a more royalist bent – and important facts to others.  The perfect balance of that coupling – trivia and detail – is what makes this book so worthwhile.
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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>1782434631</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Emma Marriott
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|isbn=1784385166
|title= I Used to Know That: History
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|title=The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany
|rating= 4
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|author=Roger Moorhouse
|genre= Politics and Society
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|rating=5
|summary= I've picked up a few things over the years, most notably from English language text books while TEFLing abroad (there'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 that didn't happen). But I have gaps, of this I am sure, and I thought to get a basic understanding of, well, the basics that we all should know, a quick read of this book wouldn't hurt.
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|genre=History
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782434488</amazonuk>
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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. 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Bruce Hugman
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|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)
|title= Out of Bounds
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|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Autobiography
 
|summary= Author Bruce Hugman has been a school teacher, probation officer, smallholder, university lecturer, PR Professional, is an international communications consultant and teacher in healthcare and patient safety. Having nursed two partners through the final stages of AIDS, and survived the 2004 Asian Tsunami. A varied and interesting life then – and it is the first thirty years of it that Hugman chooses to concentrate on here.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1508423709</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Christopher Dell
 
|title=Mythology: An Illustrated Journey Into Our Imagined Worlds
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Spirituality and Religion
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|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=What does a rainbow mean to you?  How would you explain the creation of the world if you had no science as such, or the changing of the seasons?  What other kinds of natures – chaotic trickery, evil personae or even the characteristics of goats – people your world?  And why is it that the answers man and woman have collectively formed to such questions have been so similar across the oceans and across the centuries?  This highly pictorial volume looks at the mythologies that formed those answers, and locks on to a multitude of subjects – blood, music, godly activity – to show us what has followed.
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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 side.  This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0500291519</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1684056993
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Caroline Moorehead
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|isbn=0648684806
|title=Village of Secrets
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|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist
|rating=3.5
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|author=John Holliday
|genre=History
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|rating=4
|summary=''Village of Secrets'' is an account of resistance (with a small 'r') and rescue in a series of small villages scattered across the Vivarais-Lignon plateau in Vichy France. Residents of these villages harboured a number of people, many of them children, many of them Jews, seeking to avoid deportation to concentration camps, at great personal risk. 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 of Secrets'' is, perhaps, the most detailed, much of it based on primary sources (interviews with both rescuers and the rescued, or their families), backed up by extensive documentary research.
+
|genre=Biography
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009955464X</amazonuk>
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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.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Peter Finn and Petra Couvee
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|isbn=1783784350
|title=The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book
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|title=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History
 +
|author=Esther Rutter
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
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|genre=History
|summary=One of the many things to come out of this incredibly clear and readable book is that we Brits, for all our literary heritage, have got nothing like an equivalent to Boris PasternakHe or she would have to sell like Rowling, regularly capture the enjoyment and spirit of the nation a la Danny Boyle's Olympics ceremonies, and at the same time have the cultural heft of Larkin, Rushdie, Graham Greene and more combinedSomeone connected with choosing recipients of the Nobel Prize declare him here to be the Soviet TS Eliot, but that's nothing likeSo the reader probably has to stretch herself to see someone so well-respected and well-loved for his verse, who spent twelve years and more on a huge, society-defining novel, only for the country to nix every plan to get it published.
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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>0099581345</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Ingrid von Oelhafen and Tim Tate
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|isbn=1789017977
|title=Hitler's Forgotten Children: My Life Inside the Lebensborn
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|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II
 +
|author=Wendy Williams
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
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|genre=History
|summary=You see that name that credits the author of this book? Forget it, it's not accurate.  (I don't mean Tim Tate's workmanlike, journalistic ghost writing, more of which later.)  The narrator of this book did change her name by deed poll to something like Ingrid von Oelhafen some time ago, but not exactly how she wanted.  She grew up as Ingrid von Oelhafen, although that was the name of her father, who was so desperately absent, in being over a generation older than his wife, with whom he was separated.  She might well have had her mother's maiden name if her parents had divorced – and indeed her mother did move on to have a second family, and was terribly distant herself – young Ingrid would plead and plead for her company while in a remote children's home, and a lot of family secrets were not passed down at opportune times.  Oh, and legally, due to what little documentation was to be seen, such as immunisation record cards, Ingrid was not Ingrid at all, but Erika Matko.  Through this book, we find she was not blood-kin with her brother, her step-brother was to die, she was not blood-kin with her sister, but was her brother's, –  oh, and even in this day and age you can still find a changeling foundlingSuch incredibly convoluted family trees are the fault of the Lebensborn.
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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 lifestyleOne 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>1783961201</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Francis O'Gorman
 
|title= Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History
 
|rating= 4.5
 
|genre= History
 
|summary= ‘’Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History’’ begins with a familiar scene for anyone who experiences that persistent feeling of fretful panic: lying awake in the early hours, unable to switch off, thoughts turning over in your head.  If this common situation hits home, ‘This book’, its author Francis O’Gorman writes, ‘is for you.’
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144115129X</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
 
|author=David Loades
 
|title=The Seymours of Wolf Hall: A Tudor Family Story
 
|rating= 4.5
 
|genre= History
 
|summary= In medieval times Wolf Hall or Wolfhall (or even Wulfhall), the long-since-demolished family seat in Wiltshire, was the home of the Seymour family.  Their greatest triumph, followed by a speedy decline and fall, was part of Tudor history, and is thus the focus of this book.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445634953</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Philip Parker
 
|title= The Northmen’s Fury: 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, 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 of Europe for nearly three centuries, in this fascinating and intriguing read.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551845</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Simon Wilcox
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|isbn=1980891117
|title=Mudlark River: Down the Thames with a Victorian Map
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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=Travel
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|genre=Art
|summary=Do you think finding a 19th century map would inspire you to walk the entire length of the Thames? Because that's what Simon Wilcox did. I think there's something impossibly romantic about that, don't you?
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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>0993016308</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Michael Williams
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|isbn=1789016304
|title=The Trains Now Departed: Sixteen Excursions into the Lost Delights of Britain's Railways
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|title=War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam
|rating=3.5
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|author=Melanie Martin
 +
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Beaching wasn't the only buffer to the fate of various train lines of our land – it could have been sheer managerial incompetence, the birth of the package air holiday, or even road-builders' bloody-minded spite that served to bring down the end of the line.  Yes, the fact you can easily pepper your words with idiom from the world of trains shows how important they have been over the last two hundred years, and this book is geared around that as well, if happily cliché-freeOur author takes us on a journey around various sites where train lines and elements of what once rode proudly upon them have been and gone.  So grab a platform ticket (RIP) and see what class of journey we're travelling in.
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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 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 circumspectIt's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848094353</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=John George Freeman and Ronnie Scott (editor)
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|isbn=1908745819
|title=Three Men and a Bradshaw
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|title=Surfacing
|rating=4
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|author=Kathleen Jamie
|genre=Travel
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|rating=5
|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>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|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 Aftermath
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=There have been several accounts of the battle of Waterloo and of the events that led up to it. But it is always interesting to discover a book which finds a different way of telling the tale, or in this case focusing more on what happened directly afterwards.
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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>0099563797</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tom Buk-Swienty
+
|isbn=0857058320
|title=1864: The forgotten war that shaped modern Europe
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|title=Lord Of All the Dead
 +
|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=The brief but bloody clash of arms between Denmark and Prussia which took place in 1864 has never been regarded as one of the major 19th century European wars, and I cannot recall having ever seen a single volume devoted to it so far. In this book, which forms the basis of a new TV drama series, Tom Buk-Swienty has done us a service in reminding us that it had a far greater political impact than we may have appreciated.
+
|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>1781252769</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Jeremy Treglown
+
|isbn=0008294011
|title=Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936
+
|title=How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
|rating=3.5
+
|author=Ece Temelkuran
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|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 twofold: to consider the nature of collective memory, particularly in the light of the exhumations of mass graves that commenced earlier this century, and, secondly, to examine – and celebrate - Spain’s cultural output during Franco’s years as dictator.
+
|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>1784701157</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Derek Niemann
+
|isbn=1788037812
|title=A Nazi in the Family: The Hidden Story of an SS Family in Wartime Germany
+
|title=The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908
 +
|author=Brian Anderson
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
+
|genre=History
|summary=I'm sure someone somewhere has rewritten The Devil's Dictionary to include the following – ''family: noun; place where the greatest secrets are kept''. The Niemann family is no exception. It was long known that grandfather Karl was in Germany during the Second World War, people could easily work that out from the family biography. Yet little was spoken of, apart from him being an office-bound worker, either in logistics or finance. Since the War two of three surviving siblings had relocated to the Glasgow environs, and there was even a family quip concerning Goebbels 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 relatives, was that things were a lot closer to the former than had been expected, 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.
+
|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>1780722222</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Jessie Childs
+
|isbn=1910593508
|title=God's Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England
+
|title=Apollo
|rating=4.5
+
|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins
 +
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=It goes almost without saying that sixteenth-century England, at the height of religious persecution, was a pretty perilous age. Queen Mary was notorious for the number of Protestants who were burnt at the stake for their beliefs during her five-year reign. A belief widely held by many (depending on your religion, as likely as not) was that during the forty-five years that ‘Good Queen Bess’ reigned, greater toleration held sway. This has recently been disproved beyond doubt by several historians, and this book likewise helps to underline the savagery towards Catholics that was endemic under her rule.
+
|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>1784700053</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=David Greene
+
|isbn=1786331047
|title=Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia
+
|title=The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family
|rating=4.5
+
|author=Helen Rappaport
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|rating=5
|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 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 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.  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 Waterloo
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=The idea of taking a pivotal year from the past and devoting a whole book to the theme, embracing political, social and military history, is a very interesting one.  Stephen Bates did so successfully not long ago with ‘Two Nations: Britain in 1846’, and here he does the same again, taking a step three decades back.
+
|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>1781858217</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lena Mukhina and Amanda Love Darragh (translator)
 
|title=The Diary of Lena Mukhina: A Girl's Life 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 siege.  Lena Mukhina's diary only covers half 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 pages. I've been there and never felt the ghost 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 the peak times of Nazi oppression and aerial bombing, the city lost 2 or 3 residents' lives ''every minute'' of the day on average.  The city was desperate for fuel, and food – and this is a place where it can – and does here – snow in June.  Without giving 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 cats.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144726987X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
Move on to [[Newest Home and Family Reviews]]

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

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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