Newest History Reviews
Brief Lives by John Aubrey
John Aubrey was a modest man, an antiquarian and the inventor of modern biography. His lives of the prominent figures of his generation include Shakespeare, Milton, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Funny, illuminating and full of historical details, they have been plundered by historians for centuries. Here Aubrey's biographical writings are collected, painting a series of unforgettable portraits of the characters of his day – all more alive and kicking than in a conventional history book. Full review...
So Great a Prince: England and the Accession of Henry VIII by Lauren Johnson
King Henry VII, whose victory at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 brought the curtain down on the Wars of the Roses, brought peace and stability to a divided country, but his last few years were marked by corruption and repression. When he died in 1509, there were hopes that his eighteen-year-old heir, now Henry VIII, would mark the end of medieval England and the start of a new era. The age of Protestantism and the Renaissance would indeed fulfil these aspirations. Lauren Johnson's book examines in fascinating detail the transitional year between the old and the new. Full review...
Shakespeare and the Stuff of Life: Treasures from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust by Delia Garratt and Tara Hamling (editors)
You remember that thing the British Museum did a few years back, where they picked the best of the best they owned – 100 objects that most epitomised both the riches of the place and the cultures it was designed to represent? Well, it seems that idea has legs. It’s been repeated, even, for the purpose of illuminating just one man – and you can probably guess that man was Mr Shakespeare. There has indeed been a project to pick a hundred limelights to illuminate his texts and his times, although for the purpose of this book they have been whittled down to fifty – and arranged by theme according to Jaques' 'Seven Ages of Man' speech from As You Like It. And the chances are, seeing as the results are almost more powerful here than in the best museum, you will like it very much indeed. Full review...
Marooned in the Arctic by Peggy Caravantes
Misogynists are manmade. And if anyone was in a position to hate men and the lot they put on their shoulders, it was Ava Blackjack. Her surname spoke of an abusive man she had a son by, but it was her time with four other men that made for one of the last century's more remarkable stories. An Inuit native, but one brought up in a city and with English lessons, she was invited on an excursion alongside many other 'Eskimo' and four intrepid Westerners, to the uninhabited Wrangel Island, perched off the northern Siberian coast. They were there just to stick a flag in it and call it British, even if they were pretty much fully American and Canadian, and the chap whose ideas these all were bore an Icelandic name; she was along to provide native expertise, especially waterproof fur clothing. And that was it – none of her kin joined her, leaving her in one tent and four men in another, in one of the world's most remote and inhospitable places. And that was just the start of her worries… Full review...
History's People: Personalities and the Past by Margaret MacMillan
According to the 19th century historian Thomas Carlyle, 'the history of the world is but the biography of great men'. Historian Margaret McMillan acknowledges in her introduction to this volume, based on a series of recent lectures, that there is a long-standing debate in history over whether events are moved either by individuals or by economic and social changes or technological and scientific advances, and suggests that there is no right or wrong answer. Full review...
Seeing the War: The Stories Behind the Famous Photographs from World War II by David P Colley
As anybody could tell, a still photograph is only part of the truth, if that. There is a beforehand we don't see, and an after we can only fantasise about unless we know otherwise. Take the famous image of wartime grunts pushing the flag pole upright – an icon of the War in the Pacific for the US soldiers, and the films made about Iwo Jima since. But other images of the war have been just as long-lasting, and the people in the photos don't always have movies made of their full story arc. This book is a collection of the images, and a corrective to that narrative lack, giving much more of a full biography with which to pay tribute. Full review...
Hitler's First Victims: And One Man's Race for Justice by Timothy W Ryback
Four people, taken to a sheltered corner of the place they're trapped, and shot in the back of the head by fresh-faced guards and soldiers with far too little experience of anything, let alone treating other men on the wrong end of a gun. Three people unceremoniously dumped, like slain game, on the floor of a nearby ammunition shed – the fourth had two hellish days with at least one bullet wound to the brain before he passed away. All four over-worked from being in a Nazi establishment, all four probably killed merely for being Jewish. Not a remarkable story, it's horrid to think, due to there being about six million cases of this happening. What is remarkable about this instance is that it was the first, at the incredible time of April 1933. And if it seems the first in a long chain of such murders, you would think people might have noticed that at the time, and tried to do something about it. Well, they did. Full review...
The New Threat From Islamic Militancy by Jason Burke
Barely a day passes without Islamic militancy making headlines somewhere in the world, and yet it can be a hard subject to grasp. The sudden rise of Islamic State and their campaign of shocking violence both in the Middle East and further afield has left many confused and fearful, and has provoked a sometimes extreme political response. In "The New Threat From Islamic Militancy", Jason Burke, a journalist with two decades of experience reporting on the Islamic world, attempts to correct the many misconceptions about Islamic extremism to give a true understanding of the threat we now face. Full review...
How English Became English: A short history of a global language by Simon Horobin
Angle se yon lang konfizyon. Mwen konnen, paske mwen li liv sa a tout sou li. Now, I know a lot of you understood that, and it's thanks to a certain search engine's 'translate' facility that it exists here in the first place, but hardly any of you would recognise it as Haitian Creole. But pretty much all of the words in the two sentences have come into English through one way or another, through an invasion either literal or lingual. Angle – the Anglo-Saxons were the first speakers of what we now call Old English, which is pretty much impenetrable – certainly harder to read than Creole. The konfizyon in the language are equally easy to decipher, and the second half is pretty close to the French with what seems a German verb in it. If you do use regular English, that's what you're doing – using French with some German, and Latin, and Indian, and the rest, even if that's only as far as vocabulary goes; our grammar is too Germanic to be called anything but. It's at this stage one reels out the old gag about English being the 'lingua franca' and thus proves that however global English is, it doesn't really stand as its own entity if you give it the slightest scrutiny. Full review...
World War Two: Against the Rising Sun (Campfire Graphic Novels) by Jason Quinn and Naresh Kumar
World War Two – so often a lesson subject for our primary school children, even after all this time. Nazis, Soviets, Pearl Harbor – but wait. That last wasn't just the clarion call to the Americans to join in with the rest of our Allies – it was a mere episode in a fuller story – the half of the war that was never seen by those in Europe, beyond the fact the British Empire was certainly changed forever. The War in the Pacific is something I was certainly never taught much about in school, at any age. And here's a graphic novel version of the tale from a publisher in India that can serve at last as a salutary lesson. Full review...
World War Two: Under the Shadow of the Swastika (Campfire Graphic Novels) by Lewis Helfand and Lalit Kumar Sharma
One of the most common subjects at primary school, getting on for three generations since it happened, is of course World War Two. It has the impact that sixty million dead people deserve – but only if it's taught correctly. One of the ways to present it is this book, which comes from a slightly surprising place – an Indian publisher completely new to me – but succeeds in being remarkably competent, complete and really quite readable. Full review...
The Witches: Salem 1692 by Stacy Schiff
Like most people I know the story of Salem through the very particular lens of _The Crucible_. That particular lens was the very current witch-hunt that was going on at the time. Arthur Miller's play is rightly seen as an allegory of the McCarthyism in 1950s America – but having read Schiff's more academic approach to the source tale, it's easy to see that Miller's drama is much more about the hunting down of the 'red menace' than about what might have happened in New England two hundred and fifty years earlier. Full review...
The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941 by Roger Moorhouse
Before WWII started, you didn't really have peace. Tensions had hardly settled down since the Great War, and there had been conflicts several times since, particularly in what would become the Theatre of War in eastern Europe. Nazi Germany and the Soviet regime were already at loggerheads, with the former supporting Japanese aggression in eastern Asia. They were bedfellows in evil, but very much on opposing sides. But with things stirring like never before under Hitler's expansionist activities, and despite numerous instances of this side talking to that potential enemy about the other, Nazi and Communist seemed to be firm foes. Both had publicly been denouncing the other – the Soviets deeming Nazis one side of the same corrupt, capitalist coin as us Brits, the Hitlerites already equating Communism with Jewry. But from under that period when the sides were pouring buckets of shit on each other's heads (sorry for the language, but it’s me quoting Stalin, believe it or not) came an extraordinary Pact – one of a handful in fact, that deemed Germany and Russia non-aggressors and collaborators, - just in time for them to share Poland between themselves. The initial document was short, but had an impact to affect 50 million people then, and many millions now – and yet it's hardly been the subject of a full look before now. Full review...
Battle Royal: The Wars of Lancaster and York, 1450-1464 (Wars of the Roses Book 1) by Hugh Bicheno
Lancastrian Henry VI is an ailing king. Politically his popularity waivers as he spends English money on apparently fruitless wars in France and physically his poor mental health translates as unreliability and physical weakness. His queen, Marguerite d'Anjou is determined to shore up any shortfall for the sake of the country and her children but the House of York has other ideas. And so begins bloody (and rather fascinating) civil war… Full review...
Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads by Benedict Rogers
Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist and journalist with an expert insight into Burma, gathered first-hand on journeys to regions off the beaten track. Burma is a country under the iron rule of a succession of military regimes, struggling with over half a century of suffering, much unknown to the wider international audience. Full review...
From Skedaddle to Selfie: Words of the Generation by Allan Metcalf
I have to go a roundabout way to introducing this book, so bear with me. It stems partly from dictionaries and the etymology of the language we use, but more so if anything from a different couple of books, and their ideas of generations. The authors of those posited the idea that all those archetypical generations – the Baby Boomers, the Millennials, and those before, in between and since – have their own cyclical pattern, and the history of humanity has been and will be formed by the interplay of just four different kinds, running (with only one exception) in regular order. I don't really hold much store by that, and I certainly didn't know we'd started one since the Millennials – who the heck decides such things, for one? Somebody must have put out an order, as someone here says of something else. But in the same way as generations get defined by collective persons unknown, so do words – and those words are certainly a clue to what was important, predominant and of course spoken in each decade. Full review...
Cathedrals and Abbeys (Amazing and Extraordinary Facts) by Stephen Halliday
What makes a cathedral? It's not automatically the principal church of anywhere that is made a city – St Davids is a village of 2,000 people, and wasn't always a city, but always had a cathedral, as did Chelmsford. It's not the seat of a bishop – Glasgow has the building but not the person, and hasn't had a bishop since 1690. It's not a minster – that's something completely different, and if you can understand the sign in the delightful Beverley Minster describing the difference, that I saw only the other month, you're a better man I, Gunga Din. Luckily this book doesn't touch on minsters much, and we can understand abbeys, so it's only the vast majority of this book that is saddled with the definition problem. It's clearly not a real problem, and those it does have are by-passable, for this successfully defines a cathedral as somewhere of major importance, fine trivia and greatly worthy of our attention. Full review...
Henrietta Maria by Dominic Pearce
The phrase 'tragic Queen' is an often overused one, but the French princess who became the second Stuart Queen Consort of Britain surely has as strong a claim as any to the title. In British history she was unique in that she not only lived to see her husband defeated in civil war, but also sentenced to death and in effect judicially murdered. Full review...
The Shakespeare Trail by Zoe Bramley
It has been 400 years since William Shakespeare, the man heralded as the greatest writer in the English language, and England's national poet, died. Shakespeare has made a profound mark on our culture and heritage, yet many aspects of his life remain in the shadows, and many places throughout England have forgotten their association with him. Here, Zoe Bramley takes the reader on a journey through hundreds of places associated with Shakespeare – many whose connections will come as a surprise to most. Filled with intriguing titbits of information about Shakespeare, Elizabethan England, and the places that she talks about, this is no mere travel guide. Full review...
London (Amazing and Extraordinary Facts) by Stephen Halliday
What makes a city? Is it the materials, such as the very London Stone itself, of mythological repute, that has moved around several times, and now forms part of a WH Smith's branch? (This has nothing, of course, on Temple Bar, which has also been known to walk.) Is it the people – the butchers (Jack the Ripper), the bakers (or whoever set fire to the entire city from Pudding Lane) and the candlestick makers? Is it the infrastructure, from the Underground, whose one-time boss got a medal from Stalin for his success, to the London Bridge itself, that in its own wanderlust means it's highly unlikely the Thames will freeze again? However you define a city, London certainly has a lot going for it as regards weird and wonderful, and the trivial yet fascinating. And, luckily for us, so has this book. Full review...
London Underground (Amazing and Extraordinary Facts) by Stephen Halliday
From initial worries about smutty, enclosed air with a pungent smell to decades of human hair and engine grease causing escalator fires; from just a few lines connecting London termini to major jaunts out into Metro-land for the suburbia-bound commuters; and from a few religious-minded if financially dodgy pioneer investment managers to Crossrail; the history of the world's most extensive underground system (even when a majority is actually above ground) is fascinating to many. This book is a repository of much that is entirely trivial, but is also pretty much thoroughly interesting. Full review...
Railways (Amazing and Extraordinary Facts) by Julian Holland
How and when did Laurel and Hardy replace the Duke of York (George VI)? They reopened the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway when peacetime resumed, at whose launch the latter had officiated before the War. What's the worst that can happen when you travel internationally and arrive on a London goods train with no further destination documents? Well, if you're an unidentifiable Peruvian mummy you can get buried as an unknown corpse before the invoice turns up to prove you were wanted in Belgium. After so many miles and so much drama, it's no surprise odd facts and fun trivia derive from our country's trains. This book is designed to be an ideal source of quick articles and fun mini-essays for use in the smallest room. Full review...
Queen of Spies by Paddy Hayes
Paddy Hayes has created an extensive account of the life and career of an extraordinary female spy. Daphne Park has faced sexism, brutality and betrayal. She has bravely stood against terror, charmed diplomats and navigated her way through the then alien Soviet Russia. Hers is an incredible life, one that brings the nail-biting and seat teetering that we expect from a spy story. Full review...
Britannia Obscura: Mapping Britain's Hidden Landscapes by Joanne Parker
What shape do you assume Britain to be? If you merely go by the current map, you're holding yourself ransom by the secessionists wanting devolution, and changes to the boundaries within Britain, but doesn't the place go beyond that outline on the page? Remember, it used to be connected to mainland Europe, and once we'd sort-of-settled into one kingdom on our shores the people in charge were also ruling over parts of France. And of course – the two-dimensional plan of the British Isles is nowhere near the real story, for we have many coastal waters, we have airspace, and we have a large subterranean territory. You can definitely throw away the imagined space of Britain, for the reality is far grander. Full review...
The King is Dead by Suzannah Lipscomb
Shortly before his death in January 1547, King Henry VIII's last will and testament was read, stamped and sealed. It has remained one of the most intriguing and contested documents in British history. This book examines it from every angle, and analyses the background against the last days of the King's life and the events which followed. Full review...
Human Race: 10 Centuries of Change on Earth by Ian Mortimer
We are an astonishing species. Over the past millennium of plagues and exploration, revolution and scientific discovery, women's rights and technological advances, human society has changed beyond recognition. Best known for his Time Traveller's Guide history books, Ian Mortimer here gives the reader a whistle-stop tour through ten centuries. Human Race contains the lunar leaps and lightbulb moments that, for better or worse, have sent humanity swerving down a path that no-one could have predicted. The question here is which of the last ten centuries saw the greatest change in human history? Full review...
The Mistress of Paris by Catherine Hewitt
Born into poverty, no-one could have guessed that the girl who would one day be known as Valtesse de la Bigne would have achieved greatness. This is the tale of her rise to wealth and power – starting in a dress shop as a thirteen year old, but fast becoming a courtesan who would be fought over by some of the greatest men of her time. A woman who kept an air of mystery about many details of her life, Catherine Hewitt nevertheless paints an incredible story around the gaps, and this proves to be both a full and intriguing biography, and a fascinating portrait of the time period. Full review...
SPQR A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
How do we know what really happened at any moment in 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 events. For example, were the emperors Nero and Caligula mad or simply the victims of their successors' smear campaign? What's behind all that nonsense about the city 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 an empire. Military force was important, but other threads in the weave (such as social mobility and the effect of extending citizenship to many of the conquered) made the Roman experience unique. Full review...
