Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Josh DeanEdward W Said|title=The Taking of K-129: The Most Daring Covert Operation in History|rating=5|genre=History|summary=In February 1968 the Soviet nuclear missile submarine K-129 left the port Representations of Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka peninsula with a crew of 98 submariners. The captain and executive officers were experienced: the only factor giving cause for concern was that the crew had only recently returned to base and were expecting a longer break and were only back at sea because two sister ships had experienced mechanical problems and were unfit for combat controls. The Division Commander complained that the decision was cruel and potentially reckless. He would be proved right - but not publicly - as K-129 went down with all hands in March 1968. It was a while before the sSoviet navy realised that it had lost one of its submarines and despite an extensive search they couldn't find it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445674742</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Philip Parker|title=50 Things You Should Know About the VikingsIntellectual

|genre=Children's Non-Fiction Politics and Society|summary=The Vikings have got a lot to own up to. A huge DNA study in 2014 was the first thing that proved to the Orkney residents that they had Viking blood in their veins – they had been insisting it was that Edward Said's ''Representations of the Irish. The Vikings it was that forced our English kingIntellectual''s army to march from London to Yorkshire to kill off one invasion, only to spend the next fortnight schlepping back to Hastings to try and fend off another – and the Normans had the same Norse origin as the first lot, hence the name. There is less a Thames Valley village just outside Henley – ie pretty damned far from the coast – that has a Viking longship on its signpost. Yes, they got to a lot strict theory of places, from Greenland to Kiev, from Murmansk to Turkey and the Med, and their misaligned history is well worth visiting – particularly on these pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784937908</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Emma Kay|title=Vintage Kitchenalia|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Over the half century what intellectuals are and more that I've been preparing meals on a regular basis I've seen food preparation move from being just something you did, to an obsession akin to a religionpassionate argument for what they should be. My first kitchen had nothing in Said clearly rejects the way comfortable image of luxury - it was there to make meals as nutritiously and economically the intellectual as possible: my current kitchen is not ''quite'' state of the art, but it's equipped to a high standard and is a pleasure detached expert speaking only to work inother specialists. But what of all Instead, he insists on the equipment which went beforeintellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and unpopular, which paved the way who speaks truth to what we have now? Emma Kay power even when it is going to give you a quick trip through the historyinconvenient or risky.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1445657511</amazonuk>1804272248

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Martyn BeardsleyJacqueline Rose|title= Waterloo Voices 1815: The Battle at First Hand|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= The battle of Waterloo, fought on a midsummer day on a muddy field in Belgium, brought an end to two decades of war Women in Europe. As one of the pivotal events of the nineteenth century, it has inevitably been the focus of many accounts over the last two hundred years.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445660164</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Sarah Rutherford|title=Landscape GardensDark Times

|genre=ArtBiography|summary=My first experience ''The world of the unconscious is not the antagonist of a political life, but its steadfast companion, the hidden place or backdrop where any true revolution must begin…''big Women in Dark Times is Jacqueline Rose'' garden was Versailles as a teenager s homage to courageous women throughout history, particularly women of the 21st, 20th and whilst I was impressed, I didn't really like it19th centuries. I felt stifled Her historical and strangely underwhelmed by the flatness of it all. As luck would have political backdrop is, thus, expansive, yet she navigates it I then saw Hampton Court with intelligence and it was official: I was off big gardens. It would be many years before I revised my opinion. On a trip to Harewood House it was too hot an acknowledgment that feminism's lengthy mission is a day testament to be corralled into the houseits successes, so I wandered the gardens and found they were delightful. I felt uplifted. Then a cricket match at Stowe gave me the opportunity to walk not its failures: ''the grounds for over an hour. I was completely won over and a devotee ongoing force of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown. Sarah Rutherford's ''Landscape Gardensfeminism'' was an opportunity to put him in context.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1445669935</amazonuk>1804271713

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stuart MaconieMary McCarthy|title= Long Road From Jarrow|rating= 5|genre= Travel |summary= I cancelled my ''Country Walking'' magazine subscription about a year ago and the only thing I miss is Stuart Maconie's column. His down-to-earth approach and sharp wit belie an equally sharp intellect and a soul more sensitive than he might be willing to admit. Let's be honest, though, I picked this one up because Memories of someone else's review, in which I spotted names like Ferryhill and Newton Aycliffe. Places I grew up in. Like Maconie I have no connection (that I know of) to the Jarrow Crusade but when he talks about it being ''a whole matrix of events reducible to one word like Aberfan, Hillsborough, or Orgreave'' then somehow it does become part of my history too. Tangentially, at least.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785030531</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Vicky Hayward|title=Juan Altamiras' New Art of Cookery: A Spanish Friar's Kitchen NotebookCatholic Girlhood

|genre=CookeryAutobiography|summary=In 1745 a Spanish friary cookMary McCarthy describes herself as an ''amateur architect'', Juan Altamiras, published obsessively digging into the past to piece together the first edition broken mosaic of his her life. She attributes her ''New Art of Cookery, Drawn From burning interest in the School of Economic Experiencepast''to her orphanhood, as she lacked any second-hand memories from her parents, who died in the 1918 flu epidemic. It contained more than two hundred recipes for meatThis memoir chronicles her early years, poultrybeginning with her orphanhood in Minneapolis, gameMinnesota, salted where she lived under the harsh guardianship of her late father's Irish Catholic parents and fresh fish, vegetables her abusive Uncle Myers and dessertsAunt Margaret. The style was informalLater, chatty and humorous on occasions she moved to Seattle to live with her maternal grandparents—her grandmother being Jewish and it was aimed, not at those who could afford to cook on a grand scale, but at those her grandfather Presbyterian—who provided her with more modest budgets, who sometimes needed to cook for large numbers. Whilst the ingredients were - for the most part - modestly priced there is a stress on the careful combination of flavours and aromas. Spices are used conservatively and the bluntness of some Moorish cooking is eschewed in favour different kind of something much more subtle and we see influences from Altamiras' own region, Aragon, the Iberian court and the New Worldupbringing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1442279419</amazonuk>1804271659

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Susan Duxbury-Neumann1785633457|title= What Have the Germans Ever Done for Us?Charging Around: A History of Exploring the German Population Edges of Great BritainEngland by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating= 45|genre= HistoryTravel|summary= The adapted Monty Pythonesque rhetorical question takes some time to provide Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a full answerpreference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and this slim but useful volume does so very well. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445664860</amazonuk>his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Gillian TindallB09BLBP3P8|title= The Tunnel Through TimeNeville Chamberlain's War: A New Route for an Old London JourneyHow Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary=This book traces Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the course popular imagination of historical journeys across the city in time and spaceearly days of World War II from 1939-40, examining how known as the areas above the new Crossrail route, the largest building project currently under construction in Europe offering high speed links across London''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, have changed over the centurieswar breaking out, with destruction and renewal being a constantly recurring process Churchill coming in to save the city's historyday. It Very little time is a fascinatingspent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, compellingly readable exploration through the historical highways and byways it was of vital significance in how the metropoliswar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587793</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Trigg3756228711|title=Voices of the Flemish Waffen-SSCDC: The Final Testament of the Oostfrontershappy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans Bodmer|rating=3.54

|summary=In ''The history of the week I write this, Trump has come under fire for not condemning fascistic behaviour in America from some Neo-Nazisdevelopment of IT could fill books of several hundred pages. It strikes me that the ''Neo-''  Author Hans Bodmer is a pointless dignification – yes, they cannot be deemed to follow Hitler precisely as he's long dead and burnt, so they're kind of new, but common sense obliges me to just call them Nazisquite right about that. Their excuse is they feel America He has been invaded by chosen to tell us about the enemy – short, but what if you were indeed under occupation? Could you see yourself working for explosive, history of the forces that had indeed invaded you? The author begins by pointing out that several countries were invaded by the NazisControl Data Company, CDC, and they have different feelings about the people who for whom he worked against the commonly-held nationalistic aim. France hates her collaboratorsIt's a fascinating tale, but just north told in a mixture of the border things are different – technological summary and the picture is a lot more muddy as a resultwry anecdote.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445666367</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Gerard CheshireJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title= A History of Victorian PostageFritz and Kurt|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryConfident Readers|summary=Although we think We start with the pair of postage brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the sending of letters empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a specifically Victorian innovation, its roots go far deeper than thatlight switch. This book But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, which surveys and instead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much broader time frame than as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the title might suggest, presents us younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an admirably concise picture of its development up evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to its full fruition in Buchenwald and the mid-nineteenth centurystone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1445664372</amazonuk>024156574X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=S Morris and N GrueningerJohn Henry Phillips|title=In the Footsteps of the Six Wives of Henry VIII: The visitor's companion to the palaces, castles & houses associated with Henry VIII's iconic queensSearch|rating= 5|genre= History|summary= It was inevitable that each Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the six wives latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of Henry VIII would have left their mark in some way on the places they lived titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and visitedit's underwater, when he cannot dive. This book straddles several categories; historyLatching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, gazetteer or guide bookour author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and collection that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of potted biographieswhom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144567114X</amazonuk>1472146182

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Terry BrevertonB09F4CTKJR|title= Owen Tudor: Founding Father of the Tudor DynastyFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer|rating= 4.5|genre= BiographyHistorical Fiction|summary= Owen Tudor It's the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was one of those shadowy yet very important characters the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in medieval history. While we may know little about himCanada, or at least did not until this biography appeared, his historical importance can hardly the first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be overestimatedsent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. Without himBut before that can happen, there would have been no Tudor dynastyPetrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445654180</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Helen Doe0578761718|title= The First Atlantic Liner: Brunel's Great Western SteamshipInspiring History of a Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= Isambard Kingdom Brunel's enduring seafaring monuments were The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the Great Britain and Great EasternCity of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, Their forerunner the original church was destroyed in the Great Western, which paved Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the way fire and yet is now largely forgottenthen survived for centuries until World War II, at last merits when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that wasn't the end of its story: after a full account in this book. Ms Doe admits at phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the front that she is not an engineerchurch's walls were transported to Fulton, and as a maritime historian her interests are more social and economic than technicalMissouri. Her aim is to tell There, in the story grounds of the shipWestminster College, that of the people who travelled on her church was rebuilt and today serves as crew or passengers, and her influence on subsequent maritime history after an existence of barely two decadesa memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445667207</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Svetlana Alexievich, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (translators)1784385166|title=The Unwomanly Face Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of WarNazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse

|summary=''War'', says Svetlana Alexievich, ''What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of all murder, and then hard work. And then simply ordinary life: singing, falling in love, putting your hair in curlers…''. This extraordinary book is the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a collection concentration camp? None of first-hand accounts by Russian fighting women these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich's fascist regime in the Second World War. A million women joined Russian military forces as soldiers of all ranks, medics, pilots, drivers, snipers, cryptographers. Most were very young, little more than girls of 18 or 19its iniquity. They were passionate about defending their homeland and often extremely keen to join up, returning again But some objects and again to recruitment offices until someone could images from that time may be persuaded less familiar to take themyou. Their ambition was to help their brothers, fathersIn this short volume, husbands Roger Moorhouse has attempted to fight illustrate the terrible invader. They were trained and sent to period of the front, where they were greeted at first with disappointment and disgust by fighting men, who had hoped for reinforcements Third Reich through one hundred of able-bodied men. The women had to prove themselvesits material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141983523</amazonuk> 

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Andrew LaceyLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title= The English Civil War in 100 FactsTiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryGraphic Novels|summary= The I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know. I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didn'100 Factst know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and I didn' series is now sufficiently well-established as t know more than a guarantee of useful introductory historiesspit about the people involved on either side. This latest addition, recounting book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the struggle between King and Parliament, is no exceptionwhole season of protests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1445649950</amazonuk>1684056993

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lauren Elkin0648684806|title=FlaneuseClara Colby: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and LondonThe International Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|genre=History Biography|summary=Lauren Elkin is down on suburbs: they're places where you can't or shouldn't be seen walking; places where, in fiction, women who transgress boundaries are punished (thinking The path of everything from ''Madame Bovary'Clara Dorothy Bewick' s life was probably determined when her family emigrated to ''Revolutionary Road'')the USA. When At the time she imagines to herself what the female version was just three-years-old but because of that well-known historical figuresome childhood ailment, the carefree ''flâneur'she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, might beshe remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she thinks about women who freely wandered received a good education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the world's great cities without having household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the more insalubrious connotation mid-west of the word 'streetwalker' applied United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to themjoin the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099593378</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Jeffrey James1783784350|title= IrelandThis Golden Fleece: The Struggle for Power: From the Dark Ages to the JacobitesA Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. The 'Irish troubles' go back over many centuriesjob frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. When I January was going to be a time for making changes and doubtless many others she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of my generation studied History at school, the Emerald Isle barely intruded on our consciousnessBritish Isles with occasional forays abroad, apart from brief references to discovering and telling the Battle story of the Boyne wool's history and how it had made and maybe changed the Easter Risinglandscape. This book therefore does us, and the country, She'd grown up on a service sheep farm in helping to fill Suffolk - '' a very large gap.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445662469</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Michael Hicks|title= The Family of Richard III|rating= 4|genre= History|summary= New titles about free-range child on the Yorkist dynastyfarm'' - and learned to spin, which ruled England for little more than two decades, continue to proliferateknit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. Michael Hicks, acknowledged as one of the great – although never sympathetic – experts on Richard III, has contributed an interesting chronicle to the shelves This was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445660156</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Clive Pearson1789017977|title=The Second Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War in 100 FactsII|author=Wendy Williams

|summary=To begin at Ronnie Williams was the beginning, that is one dissembling titleson of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. 100 Facts? There are bounties galore here that that low figure belies. There are a lot more's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and I would attest that there will be some you aren't completely au fait withhe might well have shaved a few years off his age. If For a while the Phoney War and family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the Battle of the Plate are bread 1929 Depression and butter five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to you, how about Matapan? You could be well be used to reading essays about Goebbels or Speer, but Field-Marshal von Manstein? That's not to say turned-out and this is utterly exhaustive or complex, nor confined to the trivialwould stay with him throughout his life. Its unexpected format actually makes it one of He joined the better primers for the entire WWII, before, during and afterarmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445653532</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= John Ashdown-Hill1980891117|title= The Wars G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of the RosesGeorge Engleheart|author=John Webley|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryArt|summary= During my schooldaysGeorge Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, I always found with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Wars Regency era. He was also one of the Roses the most fascinating period prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of English historythem being of King George III). In those days we were taught Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the battles began in 1455 and ended in 1485. Ashdown-Hill is one names of several modern historians whose study each of the subject extends these boundarieshis clients, and in this volume he starts with the reign of Richard II, ending late in the Elizabethan erasubsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445660350</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Charles Drazin1789016304|title= Mapping the PastWar and Love: A Search for Five Brothers at the Edge family's testament of Empireanguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating= 45|genre= History|summary=Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''Mapping the PastThe Diary of Ann Frank'' is at once a personal quest into the authorbut then realised that her own family's family history, stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and an account of some of seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the interestingwar years, perhaps even amazing things the Royal Engineers have achieved over the past couple of centuries. Drazin is descended from but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a generation of Engineers; five brothers country with liberal values who all served in were resistant to German occupation. Most people believed that the Army, mostly as surveyors mapping occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the far flung parts of Germans might reach the Empire. This was despite them being both Irish and Catholic. He uncovers their pastscity were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the many things they undertook and how Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it affected them in did, but initial protests melted away as the endorganisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a story that's uplifting and extremely sad, as the First World War and the Easter Rising in 1916 seem to mark a true watershed for his familyvast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099468271</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Lyndal Roper1908745819|title= Martin Luther:Renegade and ProphetSurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie|rating= 5|genre= History|summary= Exactly five centuries ago in October 2017Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses against the sale of indulgences to the door of the All Saintsthey tell you ''this one has your name on it'' Church in Wittenberg. The ensuing maelstrom ripped the Christian church asunder and changed 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 course of historybook. But how was That's a provincial professor in rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a cassock able to set the Reformation in motionbook calling your name, despite papal and imperial authority being ranged against him? rarely get it wrong. In a biography which this case, I was ten years in told why. The blurb speaks of the makingauthor considering ''an older, Lyndal Roper strips away mythology to illuminate the facts underneath (for starters, it is highly unlikely that Luther actually nailed the ninety-five theses to the door)less tethered sense of herself. '' She provides Older. Less tethered. That's not a thoughtful analysis bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the forces which drove natural world, of those aspects of the evangelical preacher poetic and convincingly explains his contradictions – whylyrical that are about style not form, after decades of monastic observance did he marry a nun and develop a love substance most of German beer and wine? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784703443</amazonuk>all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= A T Williams0857058320|title= A Passing Fury: Searching for Justice at Lord Of All the End of World War IIDead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary= In ''A Passing Fury,Lord Of All the Dead''is a journey to uncover the author' we follow an Orwell Prize-winning law academics lost ancestor's journey through Germany as he pursues the legal history of the trials waged by the British, life and to some extent other Allied forces, against the newly-fallen Nazi regimedeath. This Cercas is a deeply personal account, that reads very much like a travelogue searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in placesthe Spanish Civil War. Williams Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is affected at every turn by harrowingly familiar accounts of life in the concentration camp system, such as those of the esteemed Italian writer and academic Primo Levi, figure who features throughout looms large over the book. More striking to He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the reader, however, are the often-forgotten atrocities Williams describes that failed centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to make be a mark on our collective memory, such as hero whilst having fought for the Cap Arcona tragedy, in which some 7,000 concentration camp internees were killed in a British air raidwrong side. Horrors such as these, which largely go unremembered, raise many questions, chief among them, was justice served? Williams pursues answers to this question throughout his investigation, which is just shy of 500 pages long.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099593262</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= David Grann0008294011|title= Killers of the Flower MoonHow to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran|rating= 4.5|genre= True CrimeHistory|summary=Killers 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 Flower Moon tells question ''Discuss the story of the Osage tribe, forced factors which led to settle in the rocky, uninhabitable wilds of Oklahoma in what would become Osage County. In an unexpected turn of fortune, prospectors struck oil, instantly catapulting the Osage into unimaginable wealth and fortune making them some of the richest people in the world. Then members of the tribe start to die, slowly at first of apparently natural causes then in increasingly violent ways. Investigation into the matter stalls and is beset by incompetence '' I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a general lack of interest good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to. I think now that I do know. We are in the fate danger of the Osage until the FBI becomes involved losing democracy and draws together whilst it's a team flawed system I can't think of battle scarred, unorthodox agents led by former Texas Ranger Tom White. As pressure on White increasesa better one, from both particularly as the FBI and the increasingly angry Osage, the race to find the truth becomes increasingly difficult, with more twists and double crosses than any murder mystery'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857209027</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Feiling1788037812|title=The Island that DisappearedFraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson

|summary= 'The Island Originally passed in 1885, the law that Disappeared' tells 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 history nature of thehomosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, largely now forgotten, island of Providence in as well as the Caribbeanheterosexual Havelock Ellis. It is a fascinating and compelling account of what might have been but ultimately is Exploring the story margins of greed, ambition society and human nature. In 1630 studying homosexuality was common on board the SeaflowerEuropean Continent, a sister ship to but barely talked about in the MayflowerUK, a small group so the publications of English puritans sailed to the island to establish a new colony. They these men were convinced in their belief that the British Empire would rise in the Central America and not in New England. The hopes that they carried was soon destroyed by failing crops, quarrels and rebellions and many turned hugely significant – contributing to piracy and the plundering scientific understanding of Spanish treasure ships. Within ten yearshomosexuality, and beginning the Spanish retaliated struggle for recognition and invaded the islandequality, wiping the colony out. Providence became a footnote of history until it was resettled over a hundred years later. The book tells the island's story from its early puritan beginnings leading to the present and through its telling it provides a fascinating microcosm milestone legalisation of the world we live same-sex relationships in today1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911184040</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Twigs Way1910593508|title=Allotments (Britain's Heritage Series)Apollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins|rating=45|genre=LifestyleHistory|summary=Allotments came about originally from This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the passion for the enclosure subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of landthis, primarily for sheep pasturethe authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. Fearing that These shortcuts are the enclosures would leave peasants unable only downside to feed themselves, Elizabeth I issued an act requiring all new cottages to have four acres the book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of ground, something which a film you will be familiar with the slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has been honoured more by history than by Elizabeth's contemporariestrimmed. It was the first in This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long line of legislation with that aim in mind - which largely failed to achieve their aimsand still felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445665700</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Peter Rex1786331047|title= HaroldThe Race to Save the Romanovs: The King Who Fell at HastingsTruth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport|rating= 4.5

|summary= Harold is in The basic facts about the unenviable position for being remembered as the monarch who was defeated deaths of Nicholas and killed in Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the Norman conquesttime for various reasons, and almost nothing elsehave long since been established. He does not even merit a passing mention For the last few months of their lives in Russia the renowned 1930s spoof English history, '1066 former Tsar and all That'Tsarina, which no doubt has him in their category of 'Unmemorable Kings'. This book is thus inevitably a history rather than a biography of someone about whom undisputed facts are rather lacking. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>144565721X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Mark Zuehlke children and Claude St Aubin|title=The Loxleys and Confederation|rating=3.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=There is a huge hole few remaining servants were held in my history knowledge where North America is concernedincreasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. Slowly, To prevent them from an opening of sheer ignorancebeing rescued, having never studied it whatsoever at school, I've got a small grip on things like in July 1918 the Civil War, the foundations of the USA revolutionary regime had them all shot and a few other things. But that means nothing as far as this book is concerned, for that huge hole is Canada. No, I didn't have an inkling about how it was trying bayoneted to unifydeath in circumstances which, just as once the American Civil War news was in full pelt just across the border. I didn't know what was there before Canadaconfirmed beyond all doubt, if you see what I mean. The story does have some things in common with that of horrified their southern neighbours – European occupancy being slowly turned into a list of states as we know them now, slowly spreading into the heart of the continent with the help of the railways etc; native 'Indians' being 'relatives in the way'; past trading agreements to either maintain or try to improve on; and so on – but of course it also had the British vs French issueEurope. But did you know how an American President getting shot at the theatre had a bearing on the story? Or the Irish? Like I said, a huge hole…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0992150892</amazonuk>