Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Mary Beard1785633457|title= SPQR A History Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of Ancient RomeEngland by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryTravel|summary=How do we know what really happened at any moment in Clive Wilkinson has a history? At best we make educated guesses based on (often conflicting) evidence. The most striking aspect of Mary Beard's new examination of Roman history is how far she goes to see all sides and all possible explanations of eventstravelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. For example, were the emperors Nero and Caligula mad or simply As he neared his eightieth birthday the victims idea of their successors' smear campaign? What's behind all that nonsense about exploring the city edges of Rome being founded by twin boys suckled by wolves? This is a book that explodes some of the myths and presents alternative answers. Mary Beard analyses the evidence to shed new light on how a small community grew to become England in an empireelectric car was not totally outrageous. Military force was importantIn fact, but other threads in the weave (such as social mobility it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and the effect of extending citizenship to many of the conquered) made the Roman experience unique. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683807</amazonuk>his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Despina StratigakosB09BLBP3P8|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler at Home, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager|rating=4.5

|summary=''Please do not make Hitler look goodReceived wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history.'' Words to live by that One such is the scrubbing from the author popular imagination of this volume received from her mother, a Kefalonian who knew Nazi abuse when she saw it. Rest assured that the book does not do that, but it certainly provides a much fresher, more eloquent and interesting look at certain aspects early days of his life, and introduces us to someone else World War II from the Nazi times – Gerdy Troost1939-40, who might known as well be summarised as Hitlerthe ''Phoney War''s interior designer. In picking apart the entire life of TroostWe remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, the nature of her work and how Churchill coming in to save the buildings day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and décor she surrounded Hitler in became a part of his propaganda, we get a refreshingly new yet authoritative book, that for those with an interest as Frederic Seager argues in this side of our recent history will easily be considered one ofbook, if not the, best book it was of vital significance in how the year. The person who does come war played out with the laurels worn highest is our author.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>030018381X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Elizabeth Norton3756228711|title= CDC: The Temptation Of Elizabeth Tudor|rating= 4.5|genre= Biography|summary= Life, or rather survival, in Tudor England was a precarious business. Being close to the crown was anything but happy years with a guarantee of safety, as the fate of two of King Henry VIIIspectacular IT 's QueenPhenomena's amply demonstrated. His second daughter Elizabeth led a charmed life and went on to reign as Queen for over forty years, but she too had some narrow escapes when her liberty if not her very existence was under threat.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784081728</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Alison Maloney|title=Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian ServantsHans Bodmer|rating=54

|summary=Life in Edwardian times is currently a popular subject, thanks in no small part to ''thatThe history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.'' period drama currently showing its final series on ITV Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. ''Life Below Stairs'' examines the subject in greater detail, looking at documents and memoirs from the time He has chosen to discover what life was really like for those in service. We learn tell us about the strict hierarchy in short, but explosive, history of 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 casesControl Data Company, CDC, fired) from their positionsfor whom he worked. Welcome to It's a slice of Edwardian lifefascinating tale, served up with told in a delicious mix mixture of period illustrations technological summary and newspaper clippings|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782434356</amazonuk>wry anecdote.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Lucy AdlingtonJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title= Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear Fritz and Kurt

|genre= HistoryConfident Readers|summary=''Stitches We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in Time'' is 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 lively history of clothingvocational school. Riffling through Kurt has to make sure the wardrobes of years gone by, costume historian Lucy Adlington reveals lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the stories underneath Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. But this is the clothes we wear in this tour of time just before the history Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of fashion, ranging from ancient times having a national vote to keep the present dayNazis out, invite them in with open arms. With beautiful illustrations and full colour photographs, ''Stitches in TimeKristallnacht'' is a reminder happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of how Jews. These in their turn leave the way we dress is inextricably bound up younger Kurt at home with considerations his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of aestheticsan evacuation to Britain or the US, sexwhile Fritz and his father are, genderunknown initially to each other, class packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and lifestyle – and offers the reader stone quarry there. And us wondering how the chance to appreciate titular event for the extraordinary qualities adult variant of the clothing we wear, and the rich history it has led. all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847947263</amazonuk>024156574X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jeffrey JamesJohn Henry Phillips|title= Edward IV: Glorious Son of YorkThe Search|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= Medieval EnglandArchaeology cannot be child's own game of thronesplay, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, The Wars 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 Roseslatter, was at as our author promises to locate the centre topic of a turbulent agethe titular search. In retrospect much of And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the history of medieval Englandsearch area is a wide one, between the Norman conquest target might not exist any more – oh, and the advent of the Tudorsit's underwater, seems when he cannot dive. Latching on to have been a chronicle of instability often verging on and sometimes erupting into rebellion or civil war. The fifteenthparticular D-century conflicts between Day veteran through helping the houses of Lancaster and Yorkheroic old man's visit back to France, lasting intermittently for thirty years, were more protracted and even more brutal than our author has promised to find the restlanding craft that delivered him to Normandy, with several fierce battles and sudden changes of fortune for the two rival families, both descended that he was lucky to survive when it sank from King Edward IIIbeneath him. The risesecondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, fall and rise again of King Edward IV was a constant theme the vast majority of the warswhom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1445646218</amazonuk>1472146182

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Dan JonesB09F4CTKJR|title= Realm Divided: A Year in the Life of Plantagenet EnglandFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryHistorical Fiction|summary= 1215 has gone down in history as It's the year later stages of Magna Carta, World War I and the United States has just entered the result of King John's increasingly discontented barons attempts to exert control over their wayward conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and stubborn monarchjoined the 17 Aero Squadron. John had succeeded This company was the first US Aero Squadron to the throne of England be trained in 1199Canada, at the end of an often turbulent century. His father, Henry II, had succeeded in restoring first to be attached to the authority of RAF and the crown after almost twenty years of civil war between first to be sent into the supporters of two rival claimants skies to fight the kingdomGermans in active combat. He had inherited a challenging set on both sides of the ChannelBut before that can happen, and within four years had been driven out of most of the French ones, notably Petrol has to master flying the duchy of Normandynotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel. Posterity would bestow on him the unflattering nicknames 'John Softsword' and later 'John Lackland'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781858829</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith Jeffery0578761718|title=1916: A Global History|rating= 4.5|genre= History|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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408834308</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Gary Cox|title= Deep Thought: 42 Fantastic Quotes that Define Philosophy |rating= 4.5|genre= The Inspiring 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>}}{{newreviewSpecial Relationship|author=Kevin Flude|title=Divorced, Beheaded, Died...: The History of Britain's Kings and Queens in Bite-Sized ChunksNancy 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= WorryingG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A Literary and Cultural Historyyear in the life of George Engleheart|author=John Webley|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryArt|summary= ‘’Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History’’ begins George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a familiar scene for anyone who experiences that persistent feeling career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of fretful panic: lying awake in the early hoursmost prolific, unable to switch offpainting nearly 5, thoughts turning 000 miniatures altogether (over in your headtwenty of them being of King George III). If this common situation hits homeThroughout most of that time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, ‘This book’, its author Francis O’Gorman writes, ‘is for youand subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.’|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144115129X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Loades1789016304|title=The Seymours of Wolf HallWar and Love: A Tudor Family Storyfamily's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= In medieval times Wolf Hall or Wolfhall (or 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 Wulfhall)those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the long-since-demolished family seat Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in Wiltshirethe way that it did, was but initial protests melted away as the home of the Seymour familyorganisers became more circumspect. Their greatest triumph, followed by It's an atrocity on a speedy decline and fall, was part vast scale but made up of tens of Tudor history, and is thus the focus thousands of this bookindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445634953</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Philip Parker1908745819|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>}}{{newreviewSurfacing|author=Simon Wilcox|title=Mudlark River: Down the Thames with a Victorian Map |rating=4.5|genre=Travel|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?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993016308</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Michael Williams|title=The Trains Now Departed: Sixteen Excursions into the Lost Delights of Britain's RailwaysKathleen Jamie|rating=3.5

|summary=Beaching wasnSometimes 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 only buffer book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to the fate of various train lines of our land – hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it could have been sheer managerial incompetencewrong. In this case, the birth I was told why. The blurb speaks of the package air holidayauthor considering ''an older, or even road-buildersless tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That' bloody-minded spite that served to bring down the end s not a bad description of the linewhere I am. Yes, the fact you can easily pepper your words with idiom from Add to that my love of the natural world , of those aspects of trains shows how important they have been over the last two hundred yearspoetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book is geared around that as well, if happily cliché-freehad my name on it. Our author takes us on a journey around various sites where train lines and elements of what once rode proudly upon them It was written for me. It would have been and gonefound its way to me eventually. So grab a platform ticket (RIP) and see what class of journey we're travelling inI am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848094353</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John George Freeman and Ronnie Scott (editor)0857058320|title=Three Men Lord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and a BradshawAnne McLean (translator)

|genre=TravelHistory|summary=This book ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is quite a journey to uncover the very time machine, author's lost ancestor's life and because of that some of its own history death. Cercas is needed searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in summarythe Spanish Civil War. A year or two agoManuel Mena, our presenter Shaun Sewell was buying some private documents from Cercas' great uncle, is the descendants of John George Freeman, to complete a set of illustrated travel journals he'd met with when risking a punt on figure who looms large over the first few at auctionbook. He was intent died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on getting them published since finding them, and seemed to be the first person with that desire since they were first written in the 1870swhy his uncle fought for this dictator. Back then they were well-written, educative and entertaining looks The question at the early days centre of the travel industry, when this book is whether it is possible for example piers were novel(ty) ways for the rail companies his great uncle to justify sending people to the ends of the country where previously there had been little be a hero whilst having fought 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 householdswrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947441</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Steven Nightingale0008294011|title= GranadaHow to Lose a Country: 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>}}{{newreview7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Paul O'Keeffe|title=Waterloo: The AftermathEce Temelkuran

|summary=There have been several accounts of 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 battle of Waterloo and of question ''Discuss the events that factors which led up to ...'' I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether itwas a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to. I think now that I do know. But We are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it is always interesting to discover 's a book which finds flawed system I can't think of a different way of telling better one, particularly as the tale, or in this case focusing more on what happened directly afterwards'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099563797</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Buk-Swienty1788037812|title=1864The Fraternity of the Estranged: The forgotten war that shaped modern EuropeFight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=45

|summary=The brief but bloody clash 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 arms between Denmark homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and Prussia which took place in 1864 has never been regarded John Addington Symonds, as well as one the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the major 19th century European warsContinent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and I cannot recall having ever seen a single volume devoted beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to it so far. In this book, which forms the basis milestone legalisation of a new TV drama series, Tom Buksame-Swienty has done us a service sex relationships in reminding us that it had a far greater political impact than we may have appreciated1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781252769</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Treglown1910593508|title=Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture Apollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Memory Since 1936Mike Collins|rating=3.5

|summary=With ''Franco’s Crypt'' Jeremy Treglown has taken This incredible graphic novel is a highly charged love letter to the Moon landings and the passion for the subject – life in Spain under Franco – drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and placed it under what to some might appear Mike Collins. This is a somewhat revisionist microscope. His aim appears to be twofold: to consider the nature story we know well and because of collective memorythis, particularly the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the light 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 exhumations of mass graves slight feeling that commenced earlier this century, there are scenes missing and, secondly, to examine – that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and celebrate - Spain’s cultural output during Franco’s years as dictatorstill felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784701157</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Derek Niemann1786331047|title=A Nazi in The Race to Save the FamilyRomanovs: The Hidden Story of an SS Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family in Wartime Germany|author=Helen Rappaport

|summary=It goes almost without saying that sixteenth-century England, at The basic facts about the height deaths of religious persecutionNicholas and Alexandra, was a pretty perilous age. Queen Mary was notorious for the number some of Protestants who which were burnt deliberately obscured at the stake time for various reasons, have long since been established. For the last few months of their beliefs during her five-year reign. A belief widely held by many (depending on your religion, as likely as not) was that during lives in Russia the forty-five years that ‘Good Queen Bess’ reignedformer Tsar and Tsarina, greater toleration their children and few remaining servants were held swayin increasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. This has recently been disproved beyond doubt by several historiansTo prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and this book likewise helps bayoneted to underline death in circumstances which, once the savagery towards Catholics that news was endemic under her ruleconfirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784700053</amazonuk>