Newest History Reviews
Catherine of Aragon: An Intimate Life of Henry VIII's True Wife by Amy Licence
Catherine of Aragon, the first of Henry VIII's six wives and Queens, was arguably the most unhappy figure during the Tudor era who did not meet her end on the scaffold or at the stake. The cliché 'tragic love story' must be a fitting one in her case. Full review...
The American Presidents in 100 Facts by Jem Duducu
At a time when the US Presidential election is fielding at least one candidate you'd cross the road to avoid (and I'm not saying which one) it's useful to look back over the forty four presidents who have gone before them. It's surprising how many of them have been lawyers, soldiers and career politicians, but there have also been school teachers, journalists, Hollywood actors, professors, postmasters and even a peanut farmer. Gone are the early days when you could almost fall into the presidency accidentally - now you need a massive war chest if you're to get to election day. Full review...
The Lives of Tudor Women by Elizabeth Norton
After a series of individual biographies on the major Tudor women, mostly royal, this book brings a new dimension in touching on the lives of individuals from all walks of life. However it is much more than a collection of lives. While the Queens and princesses naturally dominate some of the chapters, it looks beyond the surface to devote attention to serving maids, businesswomen, activists and martyrs, as well as focus on various aspects of life for women and girls in Tudor England. Full review...
Robin Hood by John Matthews
The Outlaw of Sherwood Forest has been part of national mythology ever since the twelfth century. Did Mr Hood really exist, or is he a figment of popular imagination who refuses to go quietly? If historians and researchers over the ages are to be believed, the truth seems to lie somewhere in between. Full review...
Notes from the Blockade by Lydia Ginzburg
With the scenes from war torn Syria brought to our screens every night, 'Notes from the blockade' is a timely book. It is the remarkable story of Lydia Ginzburg's survival during the 900-day siege of Leningrad during World War 2. With beautiful prose full of Russian melancholy and pragmatism, it details daily life in the besieged city. I have to confess that I found this to be one of the most moving books that it has ever been my pleasure to read. Pleasure may be a strange choice of words to describe a book recounting horrifying events, but it came from the lyrical quality of the writing. Ginzburg's prose is simply beautiful. Her descriptions of the minutiae of everyday life, as it descends into the abyss, are the most human I have encountered. It is this that leaves its mark long after the final page is turned. Full review...
The German War by Nicholas Stargardt
History can be a dry subject when it focusses only on events and the key people that shaped them. However, when it uses those events as the backdrop to the lives of ordinary people it truly comes to life. ‘The German War' is the story of the second world war through the eyes of a diverse group of Germans. It tells their stories, with great candour and humanity, as it follows the build up to the war, the war itself and its aftermath. Using detailed research, interviews and anecdotal evidence, Nicholas Stargardt has created a narrative that is both a historical record and compelling. Its scope is massive but it is a tremendous achievement. Books from the allies' perspective are many and varied; as a result, this can lead to a distortion of the historical record. This work addresses this imbalance. Full review...
The Norman Conquest: William the Conqueror's Subjugation of England by Teresa Cole
Long regarded as the most pivotal date in English history, not least to generations of us familiar with the 1930s Sellar and Yeatman spoof history '1066 And All That', the year of the Norman Conquest has long been seen as a relatively isolated event as well as the start of a new era for our island story. The full picture was inevitably more complex. Full review...
A Fiery and Furious People: A History of Violence in England by James Sharpe
From the tragic tale of Mary Clifford, whose death at the hands of her employer scandalised Georgian London, to Victorian Manchester's scuttling gangs, to a duel obsessed cavalier, author James Sharpe explores the brutal underside of our national life. As it considers the litany of assaults, murders and riots that pepper our history, it also traces the shifts that have taken place in the nature of violence and in people's attitudes to it. Why was it, for example, that wife-beating could at once be simultaneously legal and so frowned upon that persistent offenders might well end up ducking in the village pond? How could foot ball be regarded at one moment as a raucous pastime that should be banned, and next as a respectable sport that should be encouraged? Professor James Sharpe draws on an astonishingly wide range of material to paint vivid pictures of the nation's criminals and criminal system from medieval times to the present day. He gives a strong sense of what it was like to be caught up in a street brawl in medieval Oxford one minute, and a battle during the English Civil War the next. Looking at a country that has experienced not only constant aggression on an individual scale, but also the Peasants' Revolt, the Gordon Riots, the Poll Tax protests and the urban unrest of summer 2011, this book asks – are we becoming a gentler nation? Full review...
Strange Victoriana: Tales of the Curious, the Weird and the Uncanny from Our Victorian Ancestors by Jan Bondeson
The Victorians, not surprisingly, had their own tabloid press. The most successful title of this nature was the 'Illustrated Police News', a weekly journal first published in 1864 and lasting seventy-four years. Not to be confused with the more upmarket 'Illustrated London News', its main stock-in-trade was weird, far-fetched and not always entirely genuine stories from Victorian life, generally in Britain but sometimes in Europe as well. This book is based on a recently-discovered archive of the paper. Prepare to be amazed, enthralled, sometimes horrified – and occasionally disbelieving. Full review...
The Crime and the Silence by Anna Bikont
Where was your father? Where was your brother, your mother, your uncle? These are the questions Anna Bikont struggles to ask during her investigation into a shocking act of violence committed against the Jewish community in Jedwabne during the summer of 1941. The Crime and the Silence weaves together journals, interviews and pictures to share the story of a community torn apart by hatred and intolerance. It is also a moving testament to the dedication of Bikont, who documents her struggle to find the truth with grace and dignity in the face of silence, rationalisation, and even anger, from members of the Polish community who would rather not stir up the crimes of the past. Full review...
Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower by Susan Higginbotham
The fate of Margaret Pole, who as the cover says has a good claim to the title of 'the last Plantagenet', was a sorry one. As a close relation of the Yorkists and the Tudors at a time of upheaval, her life was overshadowed by the executions of several of her family – and ultimately leading to her own, largely it seems, for the 'crime' of being who she was. Full review...
Electric Shock: From the Gramophone to the iPhone - 125 Years of Pop by Peter Doggett
For many of us, it must be difficult to imagine a life without recorded music. Millions of us must have grown up with, even to, a very varied soundtrack consisting of one genre after another. In this book, Peter Doggett takes a marvellous broad sweep through the history of popular music from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day, from wax cylinders to streaming services. A rather maudlin ditty 'After The Ball', by Charles K. Harris, is regarded as the first modern popular song (well, it was modern in 1891) – the first of millions. Full review...
Caught in the Revolution by Helen Rappaport
Few cities have experienced a year more dramatic than Petrograd in 1917. The city, now known as St Petersburg, went through two revolutions: the first a popular uprising that brought down the Romanov dynasty, the second a Bolshevik coup that led to the formation of the Soviet Union. At the time, Petrograd was home to a large expatriate community, including diplomats, journalists, and businessmen. Many kept diaries or wrote letters home, vividly describing the chaos unfolding at their doorstep. In Caught in the Revolution, Helen Rappaport draws on this material to give a gripping first-hand account of the Russian Revolution, as told by those who lived through it. Full review...
Holy Sh*t: A brief history of swearing by Melissa Mohr
Holy Sh*t as the name suggests looks at both swearing, in Biblical terms, to swearing, also usually in Biblical terms but with rather more emphasis on the act, rather than the deity. This book takes the reader on a journey from the Old Testament, when swearing your allegiance to the one true God was a prerequisite for staying alive, to the Middle Ages where swearing on the same God was punishable by rather grisly death. That takes care of the Holy, now onto the part you are really interested in, the Sh*t. Full review...
The Beauty of Her Age: A Tale of Sex, Scandal and Money in Victorian England by Jenifer Roberts
The name of Yolande Stephens (nee Duvernay) is not that well-known in the annals of Victorian England, but behind it lies an enthralling rags-to-riches saga. How did a young girl born into poverty in Paris become one of the most celebrated ballerinas of her time in England, and after that one of the richest women in the country, with a fortune on her death which rivalled that of Queen Victoria? Full review...
The Originals: The Secret History of the Birth of the SAS by Gordon Stevens
The SAS is a regiment shrouded in secrecy. Since its spectacular rise to fame during the Iranian Embassy siege in 1978, it has become a part of myth and folklore. The paradox is that more words have probably been written about this organisation than any other military unit in the world. Some are well researched, and have a genuine historical perspective on the regiments operations and activities. Others are pure fantasy, which add little, other than further the mystique of a regiment that lives in the shadows. The Originals provides a fresh perspective. It tells the story of the birth of the SAS, by the people who were there. In a series of long forgotten interviews, the regiment is brought to life with fresh insight and wonderful anecdotes. Full review...
Charles Brandon: Henry VIII's Closest Friend by Steven Gunn
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was almost unique in Tudor history in that he was a close friend and companion – in fact the closest – of King Henry VIII throughout the latter's reign, never really fell out of favour, and had the good fortune to die peacefully in his bed, just eighteen months before his notoriously capricious royal patron. Full review...
Somme: Into the Breach by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
One-hundred years ago this month, on the 1st of July 1916, the most notorious battle in the history of the British army began at 07:20 with the detonation of a huge mine under the Hawthorn Redoubt. The Battle of the Somme had begun, and by the end of the first day the British had suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, 20,000 of whom were killed. Published to mark the centenary of the battle, Somme: Into the Breach by historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore is a comprehensive account of the conflict told primarily by the soldiers who fought in it. Full review...
William the Conqueror: The Bastard of Normandy by Peter Rex
The basic facts of William I's life are inevitably as clouded as those surrounding the Norman conquest, the events and politics which led up to it, and the aftermath. As Peter Rex makes clear in his introduction, any surviving sources are inevitably very incomplete. Moreover, 'the writing of the history of the eleventh century requires the historian to attempt to provide motives and explanations for events that are only sketchily described at best'. Full review...
The Munich Art Hoard: Hitler's Dealer and His Secret Legacy by Catherine Hickley
One of the most newsworthy events in modern art history happened seemingly by chance. When tax police raided the house of an aged man in Munich it was because they assumed he had been moving too much money about and paying no tax – this six months after he was seen on the train between Bavaria and Switzerland with 'nearly too much' cash. The investigators had no case, but he had something much more complex and rich – a massive legacy of 20th Century German and European art. But that collection had to have an origin – one of dubious and at times nefarious beginnings, and one that could have quite a rich and convoluted background. Hickley, in these pages, gives us much in the way of context as well as ironing out those convolutions, so this story is both of interest to Nazi historians and art scholars – as well as to those larger numbers who just like a good story told well. Full review...
Ancient Worlds by Michael Scott
History can be perceived as a dusty academic backwater. Often viewed as an irrelevance in our modern world, as we race through the daily events of our lives. It is a subject that has suffered greatly in our education system, where there has always been a tendency to teach the subject in isolation, only focussing on the events that have shaped our own national identity. Michael Scott's new book offers a refreshing change. Ancient Worlds is thought provoking history for the general reader. Well researched and with a persuasive argument, he explores the interactions across three differing cultures. Interactions that provide a new perspective on our modern world. Full review...
Weatherland: Writers and artists under English skies by Alexandra Harris
The story of English culture over a thousand years can be told as the story of changing ideas about the weather. A sweeping panorama, Weatherland explores how writers and artists, looking up at the same skies and walking in the brisk air, have felt very different things. A journey through centuries and cultures, Harris walks the reader through misty moor and foggy fen, lays with them on bright sunlit beaches, treks with them to stormy summits, and introduces them to a fascinating cast of writers, artists and cultural figures along the way. Full review...
Forgotten History: Unbelievable Moments from the Past by Jem Duducu
The numerous highways, byways and tangents of the chronicle of our life on earth provide the raw rata for any number of alternative histories, and in this book Jem Duducu has trawled magnificently through the ages from several centuries BC up to the present day. Full review...
The Anglo-Saxons in 100 Facts by Martin Wall
As one of the generation who was introduced to English history through the 'Kings and Queens' principle, and thoroughly enjoyed it, I have long since regarded the period between the Roman invasion and the Norman conquest as a bit of a blur. For me it is a rather murky area, punctuated by the likes of Hengist and Horsa, Alfred the Great and Ethelred the Unready, not to mention the Athelstans, Edgars, Egberts and others who are so often little more than names. In order words, what exactly did they do? This admirable title brings it all into focus. Full review...
24 Hours at the Somme by Robert Kershaw
They came past one by one...walking lumps of clay, with torn clothing, hollow cheeks and sunken eyes...There was a dreadful weariness, but a wildness burning in their fevered eyes, showing what this appalling hand to hand fighting had cost them. Utterly unforgivable for me...
So goes the description of the men, the ghosts, at the end of the first day of the Somme. July 1 2016 will mark 100 years since this most bloody of battles took place. It was supposed to be the optimistic 'Big Push' that would end the Great War, but by sunset of the first day the British casualties numbered 57,470. The battle would rage until November that year, with the total number of casualties on all sides exceeding one million. Full review...
Mr Darley's Arabian: High Life, Low Life, Sporting Life: A History of Racing in 25 Horses by Christopher McGrath
All thoroughbred racehorses are descended from one of just three stallions which came to England about three hundred years ago; The Byerley Turk, The Darley Arabian and The Godolphin Arabian. The last century or so has seen a decline in the lines from the first and last of these stallions, to the extent that some 95% of all thoroughbreds worldwide - not just in England - are descended from The Darley Arabian, which was originally bought in Aleppo from Bedouin tribesmen and shipped to Yorkshire in 1704, by Thomas Darley, who died, in difficult financial circumstances before he could follow his horse home. Full review...
Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas That Shape the World by Wade Graham
Between 1950 and 2014 the world's urban population increased from 746 million to 3.9 billion. The urbanising trend is set to continue with the United Nations predicting that by the middle of the century 66% of us will be city dwellers, a massive six billion people. How have city planners and architects tried to cope with the recent surge? How can they avoid repeating mistakes from the past? Both of those questions are considered in Dream Cities – Seven Urban Ideas That Shape The World, Wade Graham's excellent field guide to the modern world. Full review...
The Reformation in 100 Facts by Kathleen Chater
The Reformation was one of the major events, if not themes of European history, that has decisively shaped the modern world, and has inevitably provided material for many a detailed account in print. This handy little volume, one of a new series from Amberley, reduces a very complex subject to a series of short chapters which make an ideal introduction. Full review...
