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[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Elizabeth Norton1785633457|title= The Temptation Of Elizabeth TudorCharging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating= 4.5|genre= BiographyTravel|summary= Life, or rather survival, in Tudor England was Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a precarious businesspreference for slow travel. Being close to As he neared his eightieth birthday the crown was anything but a guarantee idea of safety, as exploring the fate edges of two of King Henry VIII's Queen's amply demonstratedEngland in an electric car was not totally outrageous. His second daughter Elizabeth led In fact, it should be a charmed life pleasant holiday for Clive and went on to reign as Queen for over forty yearshis wife, Joan, but she too had some narrow escapes when her liberty if not her very existence was under threat.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784081728</amazonuk>shouldn't it?

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alison MaloneyB09BLBP3P8|title=Life Below StairsNeville Chamberlain's War: True Lives of Edwardian ServantsHow Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager|rating=4.5

|summary=Life in Edwardian times Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is currently a the scrubbing from the popular subjectimagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40, thanks in no small part to known as the ''thatPhoney War'' period drama currently showing its final series on ITV. ''Life Below Stairs'' examines the subject in greater detailWe remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, looking at documents and memoirs from Churchill coming in to save the day. Very little time to discover what life was really like for those is spent on this period in service. We learn about the strict hierarchy cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in the household and the duties expected this book, it was of each individual. We see vital significance in how much each member of staff was paid and how workers were hired (and in many cases, fired) from their positionsthe war played out. Welcome to a slice of Edwardian life, served up with a delicious mix of period illustrations and newspaper clippings|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782434356</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Lucy Adlington3756228711|title= Stitches in TimeCDC: The Story of the Clothes We Wear happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans Bodmer

|genre= History|summary=''Stitches in Time'' is a lively The history of clothing. Riffling through the wardrobes development of years gone by, costume historian Lucy Adlington reveals the stories underneath the clothes we wear in this tour IT could fill books of the history of fashion, ranging from ancient times to the present dayseveral hundred pages. With beautiful illustrations and full colour photographs, ''Stitches in Time''  Author Hans Bodmer is a reminder quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of how the way we dress is inextricably bound up with considerations of aestheticsControl Data Company, sexCDC, genderfor whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, class and lifestyle – and offers the reader the chance to appreciate the extraordinary qualities told in a mixture of the clothing we wear, technological summary and the rich history it has ledwry anecdote. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947263</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jeffrey JamesJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title= Edward IV: Glorious Son of YorkFritz and Kurt|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryConfident Readers|summary= Medieval England's own game We start with the pair of thronesbrothers 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, The Wars of helping the Rosesneighbours, was being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the centre of 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 turbulent agelight switch. In retrospect much of But this is the time just before the history of medieval EnglandAustrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, between the Norman conquest and the advent instead of having a national vote to keep the TudorsNazis out, seems to have been a chronicle invite them in with open arms. ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of instability often verging on and sometimes erupting into rebellion or civil warJews. The fifteenth-century conflicts between These in their turn leave the houses younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of Lancaster an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and Yorkhis father are, lasting intermittently for thirty yearsunknown initially to each other, were more protracted and even more brutal than packed off on the rest, with several fierce battles same train to Buchenwald and sudden changes of fortune for the two rival families, both descended from King Edward IIIstone quarry there. The rise, fall and rise again And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of King Edward IV was a constant theme of the wars.all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1445646218</amazonuk>024156574X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Dan JonesJohn Henry Phillips|title= Realm Divided: A Year in the Life of Plantagenet EnglandThe Search|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= 1215 has gone down Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in history as the year of Magna Cartadirt looking to find what you can find, the result of King John's increasingly discontented barons attempts often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to exert control over their wayward and stubborn monarchfind some specific thing. John had succeeded to the throne This book is a case of England in 1199, at the end of an often turbulent century. His fatherlatter, Henry II, had succeeded in restoring as our author promises to locate the authority topic of the crown after almost twenty years of civil war between titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the supporters of two rival claimants to search area is a wide one, the kingdomtarget might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. He had inherited Latching on to a challenging set on both sides of particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the Channellanding craft that delivered him to Normandy, and within four years had been driven out of most of the French onesthat he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, notably the duchy vast majority of Normandywhom perished. Posterity Who else would bestow on him the unflattering nicknames 'John Softsword' and later 'John Lackland'.make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781858829</amazonuk>1472146182

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith JefferyB09F4CTKJR|title=1916: A Global HistoryFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryHistorical Fiction|summary=1916 was a pivotal year in modern history. It witnessed 's the Easter Rising in Dublin, the battles later stages of Verdun World War I and the Somme, United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the election of Woodrow Wilson as American President17 Aero Squadron. These, and several other events described in this book This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in detailCanada, were later seen as crucial staging points in the course of first to be attached to the First World War.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408834308</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Gary Cox|title= Deep Thought: 42 Fantastic Quotes that Define Philosophy |rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= Who really knows what ''Cogito ergo sum'' means? Yes, you may know that Descartes said it, RAF and that it translates as 'I think, therefore I am', but what was it the French philosopher was trying first 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 be sent into the seventeenth century or skies to fight the eighteenth? If these are the sort of question Germans in active combat. But before that keep you awake at nightcan happen, then Gary Cox's ''Deep Thought: 42 Fantastic Quotes that Define Philosophy'' will be a welcome addition Petrol has to your librarymaster flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472567269</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kevin Flude0578761718|title=Divorced, Beheaded, Died...: The Inspiring History of Britain's Kings and Queens in Bite-Sized Chunksa Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver

|summary=History lives. Proof The church of that sweeping statement can be St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in this bookthe City of London from at least 1181, and when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, the fact that while it only reached original church was destroyed in the grand old age Great Fire of sixLondon 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 has had was again ruined by bombs during the dust brushed off it and has been reprinted – and while Blitz. But that wasn't the present royal incumbent it ends end of its main narrative with has not changedstory: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, other things havethe stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. This has quietly been updated to include There, in the reburial grounds of Richard III in LeicesterWestminster College, the church was rebuilt and seems to have been rereleased at a perfectly apposite time, today serves 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 memorial to others. The perfect balance of that coupling – trivia and detail – is what makes this book so worthwhileWinston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782434631</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Emma Marriott1784385166|title= I Used to Know ThatThe Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material Historyof Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse|rating= 45|genre= Politics and SocietyHistory|summary= I've picked up a few things over What is the years, most notably from English language text books while TEFLing abroad (there's nothing like an exciting lesson on Guy Fawkes first image that comes to have a classroom mind when you think of Mexicans wondering why we so love the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to celebrate a terrorist attack that didnconcentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich't happen)s fascist regime in all its iniquity. But I have gaps, of some objects and images from that time may be less familiar to you. In this I am sureshort volume, and I thought Roger Moorhouse has attempted to get a basic understanding illustrate the period of, well, the basics that we all should know, a quick read Third Reich through one hundred of this book wouldn't hurtits material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782434488</amazonuk> 

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Bruce Hugman|title= Out of Bounds|rating= 4|genre= Autobiography|summary= Author Bruce Hugman has been a school teacher, probation officer, smallholder, university lecturer, PR ProfessionalLun Zhang, is an international communications consultant and teacher in healthcare and patient safety. Having nursed two partners through the final stages of AIDSAdrien Gombeaud, Ameziane 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 DellEdward Gauvin (translator)|title=MythologyTiananmen 1989: An Illustrated Journey Into Our Imagined WorldsShattered Hopes

|genre=Spirituality and ReligionGraphic Novels|summary=What does a rainbow mean to you? How would you explain I never really followed the creation events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the world if second half of their teens has other priorities, you had no science as such, or the changing know. I certainly didn't know of the seasons? What other kinds weeks of natures – chaotic trickery, evil personae or even protests and hunger strikes from the characteristics of goats – people your world? And why is it that students before the answers man massacre and woman have collectively formed to such questions have been so similar across the oceans and across birth of the centuries? This highly pictorial volume looks at Tank Man image, I didn't know how the mythologies that formed those answersarea had long been a venue for political protest, and locks I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on to either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a multitude general browser's context for the whole season of subjects – blood, music, godly activity – to show us what has followedprotests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0500291519</amazonuk>1684056993

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Caroline Moorehead0648684806|title=Village of SecretsClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=3.54|genre=HistoryBiography|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick''Village s life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of Secretssome childhood ailment, she wasn'' is an account of resistance (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 small 'r') good education, both in and rescue in a series out of small villages scattered across school. She was the Vivarais-Lignon plateau only child in Vichy Francethe household and her childhood was glorious. Residents of these villages harboured a number of people By contrast, many her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of them childrenthe United States and life was hard, many of them Jews, seeking as Clara was to avoid deportation find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to concentration camps, at great personal riskjoin the family. There have been other accounts of this chapter in French history and Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, of coursehad ten pregnancies, a great many books about Vichy France seven surviving children and died in generalchildbirth not long after Clara arrived. However, ''Village of Secrets'' is, perhaps, As the most detailedeldest girl, much of it based a heavy burden would fall on primary sources (interviews with both rescuers Clara and the rescued, or their families), backed up by extensive documentary researchWisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009955464X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Finn and Petra Couvee1783784350|title=The Zhivago AffairThis Golden Fleece: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden BookA Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=One of the many things to come out of this incredibly clear It was December and readable book is that we Brits, for all our literary heritageEsther Rutter was stuck in her office job, have got nothing like an equivalent writing to Boris Pasternakpeople she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. He or 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 have to sell like Rowling, regularly capture travel the enjoyment length and spirit breadth of the nation a la Danny Boyle's Olympics ceremoniesBritish Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and at telling the same time have the cultural heft story of Larkin, Rushdie, Graham Greene wool's history and how it had made and more combinedchanged the landscape. Someone connected with choosing recipients of She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the Nobel Prize declare him here farm'' - and learned to be the Soviet TS Eliotspin, but thatknit and weave from her mother and her mother's nothing likefriend. So 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 publishedThis was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581345</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ingrid von Oelhafen and Tim Tate1789017977|title=HitlerRonnie and Hilda's Forgotten ChildrenRomance: My Towards a New Life Inside the Lebensbornafter World War II|author=Wendy Williams

|genre=AutobiographyHistory|summary=You see that name that credits Ronnie Williams was the author son of this book? Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. Forget it, itThere's some doubt as to whether or not accurate. (I don't mean Tim Tatethey were ever married or even Harry's workmanlike, journalistic ghost writing, more of which later.) The narrator of this book did change her name by deed poll birthdate: he claimed to something like Ingrid von Oelhafen some time agohave been born in 1863, but not exactly how she wanted. She grew up as Ingrid von Oelhafen, although that was the name of her father, who he was so desperately absent, in being over a generation already many years older than his wife, with whom Ethel and 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 shaved a few years off his age. For a second while the family, and was terribly distant herself – young Ingrid would plead and plead for her company while quite well-to-do but disaster struck in a remote children's home, the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a lot of family secrets were not passed down at opportune timesvery different lifestyle. Oh, and legally, due to what little documentation One thing he did inherit from his father was his need 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 bloodwell-kin with her brother, her stepturned-brother was to die, she was not blood-kin with her sister, but was her brother's, – oh, out and even in this day and age you can still find a changeling foundlingwould stay with him throughout his life. Such incredibly convoluted family trees are He joined the fault of the Lebensbornarmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783961201</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Francis O'Gorman1980891117|title= Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= ‘’WorryingG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A Literary and Cultural History’’ begins with a familiar scene for anyone who experiences that persistent feeling of fretful panic: lying awake year 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>}}{{newreview|author=David Loades|title=The Seymours life 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>}}{{newreviewGeorge Engleheart|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|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

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=I'm sure someone somewhere has rewritten The Devil's Dictionary to include Originally passed in 1885, the following – ''family: noun; law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place where the greatest secrets are kept''for 82 years. The Niemann family is no exceptionBut during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. It was long known that grandfather Karl was in Germany during the Second World WarBetween 1891 and 1908, people could easily work that out from three books on the family biographynature of homosexuality appeared. Yet little was spoken ofThey were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, apart from him being an office-bound worker, either in logistics or financeas well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Since Exploring the War two margins of three surviving siblings had relocated to the Glasgow environs, society and there studying homosexuality was even a family quip concerning Goebbels and Gorbals (''family: noun; place where common on the worst things are spoken European Continent, but barely talked about in the best way''). What was a surprise to our authorUK, and many so the publications of his relatives, was that things these men were a lot closer hugely significant – contributing to the former than had been expectedscientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for Karl was such an office worker – for the SS. With a lot of family history finally out of the closet of silent mouths, recognition and with incriminating photographic evidence revealed in unlikely waysequality, leading to the whole truth can be known. But this is certainly not just milestone legalisation of interest to that one small familysame-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780722222</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jessie Childs1910593508|title=God's Traitors: Terror Apollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Faith in Elizabethan EnglandMike Collins|rating=4.5

|summary=It goes almost without saying that sixteenth-century EnglandThis incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, at the height Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of religious persecutionthis, was the authors take a pretty perilous agefew narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. Queen Mary was notorious for These shortcuts are the only downside to the number book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of Protestants who were burnt at a film you will be familiar with 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 slight feeling that during the forty-five years there are scenes missing and that ‘Good Queen Bess’ reigned, greater toleration held swaydialogue has been trimmed. This has recently is a graphic novel that could easily have been disproved beyond doubt by several historians, three times as long and this book likewise helps to underline the savagery towards Catholics that was endemic under her rulestill felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784700053</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Greene1786331047|title=Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=It's no mistake that the cover of my edition of this book is a photo where the Trans-Siberian Railway is horizontal in the frame. It's well known for going east-west, left The Race to right across Save the map of Romanovs: The Truth Behind the largest country by far in the world. 9,288 kilometres from Moscow Secret Plans to the eastern stretches of Rescue 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>}}{{newreviewImperial Family|author=Stephen Bates|title=1815: Regency Britain in the Year of WaterlooHelen Rappaport|rating=4.5

|summary=The idea basic facts about the deaths of taking a pivotal year from the past Nicholas and devoting a whole book to Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the themetime for various reasons, embracing politicalhave long since been established. For the last few months of their lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, social their children and military historyfew remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, is a very interesting onehumiliating captivity. Stephen Bates did so successfully not long ago with ‘Two Nations: Britain To prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to death in 1846’circumstances which, and here he does once the same againnews was confirmed beyond all doubt, taking a step three decades backhorrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781858217</amazonuk>