Newest History Reviews
1815: Regency Britain in the Year of Waterloo by Stephen Bates
The idea of taking a pivotal year from the past and devoting a whole book to the theme, embracing political, social and military history, is a very interesting one. Stephen Bates did so successfully not long ago with ‘Two Nations: Britain in 1846’, and here he does the same again, taking a step three decades back. Full review...
The Diary of Lena Mukhina: A Girl's Life in the Siege of Leningrad by Lena Mukhina and Amanda Love Darragh (translator)
If life as a girl of school-leaving age is hard enough, think about it when you're stuck in a great city under a horrendous siege. Lena Mukhina's diary only covers half the 800-odd days the nightmare in Leningrad lasted, but so palpably singular were the circumstances that it feels like one is given the clearest insight into what it was like, courtesy of these pages. I've been there and never felt the ghost of the siege in the modern St Petersburg, anything like (for example) the ruination of Warsaw had lived on. But a dreadful time this was. At the peak times of Nazi oppression and aerial bombing, the city lost 2 or 3 residents' lives every minute of the day on average. The city was desperate for fuel, and food – and this is a place where it can – and does here – snow in June. Without giving too much of the diet away, it's notable that later on Lena dreams of having a menagerie of small animals to live with – but no dogs or cats. Full review...
Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War by Jerry White
It seems that only recently, with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War upon us, that historians have really looked thoroughly at the social history aspect and the effect it had on the population at home. Jerry White, who has already made a study of London over the last three centuries or so in previous titles, now turns his attention to life in the capital during those momentous four years. Full review...
The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making by David Esterly
Bouncing between his studio in upstate New York and the sites of various English sojourns, woodcarver David Esterly's seems to be an idyllic existence. Yet it's not all cosy cottages in the snow and watching geese and coyotes when he looks up from his workbench. There is an element of hard-won retreat from the trials of life in this memoir, but at the same time there is an argument for the essential difficulty of the artist's life. 'Carvers are starvers,' a wizened English carver once told him. Certainly there is no great fortune to be won from a profession as obscure as limewood carving, but the rewards outweigh the hard graft for Esterly. Full review...
Did We Meet on Grub Street? by Emma Tennant, Hilary Bailey and David Elliott
Essentially, the three authors (all of whom have long careers in the book industry) revel in the idea of being whining old curmudgeons who miss the good old days of publishing. This unashamed nostalgia provides the focus of the book and allows the writers to recount numerous anecdotes from their days in the publishing business. Whilst the primary audience for this book may well be students of creative writing and media studies, it also serves as an interesting exploration of an aspect of modern history: how a once-burgeoning industry is now a shell of its former self, much like a lot of manufacturing. Because of this, I was disappointed that no space was given to a consideration of how the rise of the e-book and Kindle has directly damaged both the sale of books and the potential for new books to be written (fewer real books sold = fewer financial advances paid to writers = fewer books written). Also, given the clear love of books as treasured artifacts, the dismissal of the Harry Potter phenomenon seems truculent, given the impetus the series gave to reading amongst both the young and adults. Full review...
The Prussian Princesses: The Sisters of Kaiser Wilhelm II by John Van der Kiste
Kaiser Wilhelm II is well known and not for the best of reasons and he's certainly over-shadowed his six younger siblings. John Van der Kiste's first biography was of his father, Kaiser Friedrich III and he has also written about Emperor Wilhelm II so he is well placed to write about the three youngest children Kaiser Friedrich and Victoria, Princess Royal. Originally he intended to write about Friedrich's second daughter, but it quickly became obvious that the most satisfying biography - for reader and author - would be a biography of Victoria, Sophie and Margaret, their mother's kleebatt or trio, as they were known. Full review...
MOD: From Bebop to Britpop, Britain's Biggest Youth Movement by Richard Weight
Mod is arguably a rather-overused term. First of all, there is the matter of establishing a precise definition. Modernism, which was soon abbreviated for convenience, began as the working-class movement of a newly affluent nation. Once the age of immediate post-war austerity was gone, the cult of a youth keen to shake off the drab conformity of life in 1950s Britain took hold. It was more than anything else an amalgam of American music and European fashions, beginning as a popular cult and gradually becoming a mainstream culture. Full review...
Massacre in Norway: The 2011 Terror Attack on Oslo and the Utoya Youth Camp by Stian Bromark and Hon Khiam Leong (translator)
Anders Behring Breivik was 32 when he both planted a van bomb in Oslo's central government district to hit out at what he thought was 'Cultural Marxism', which killed 8, then left for an island in a lake 24 miles away, where a notably political youth gathering was enjoying itself. He gunned down 69 people – more than one in ten of those at the camp – and wounded many scores more. He also spammed countless people with another of his projects, a lengthy manifesto declaring his ideas about Islamisation and what he saw as a pernicious multiculturalism ruining his country. His case was one of the more superlative events in modern Nordic history – as was the surprisingly lenient sentence for over 70 lives of just 21 years. This is, as you'd expect, one of the many books to result from the case. Full review...
Magna Carta: The Making and Legacy of the Great Charter by Dan Jones
For what do we – and by courtesy of a lengthy timeline in history, would the Americans likewise – most likely owe thanks to a spigurnel? What is the most revered legal document in history, which sets out the rights of man – but also has time to talk about widows' rights, fish traps, and to be both sexist and to discuss the importance to people's estates to debts owed Jewish moneylenders? What will probably be the only notable historical experience of Britain in 1215, when we finally get diverted from thinking about WWI and discuss the 800 years of something else, even though the authority of no less than the Pope declared it null and void within ten weeks of its being finished? Full review...
Rush Hour by Iain Gately
Rush Hour.
500 Million commuters go through it every day, and it's hard to avoid - whether like me you're a jaded Londoner stuck in someone's armpit whilst attempting to read on a cramped tube, or trying to navigate busy country lanes in order to do the school run and get to work on time, we've probably all experienced it. But have you ever thought about the history of it? Full review...
Merchant Adventurers: The Voyage of Discovery that Transformed Tudor England by James Evans
We tend to associate the golden age of global navigation and exploration with the Elizabethan age and such luminaries as Drake, Raleigh and Hawkins. This book does us all a service in reminding us of the original pioneers, whom they overshadowed and who seem less well-remembered these days. Full review...
A History of the World in Numbers by Emma Marriott
Make no mistake, this book does what it says on the cover. That also goes to say that it is not A History of the World of Numbers, or A History of the World's Numbers and what they might mean, as other books provide. This is a primer of the world's history, right from the earliest days of civilisation up to the close of World War Two, in handy bite-sized chunks, where the headline data can be given using a number. Full review...
Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler by Philip Ball
Picture yourself in Nazi Germany, at any time of the Reich's powers. What do you do, and how do you behave? Do you recognise the fact Jews are being oppressed and have been since the first days of the Nazi regime? Do you do anything about this, or are you aware of the problems the country has had due to losing the Great War and having the whole Weimar Republic and hyperinflation, and just look after number one? Now picture yourself as a scientist. All you've known your adult life has been to furthering your knowledge in, say, physics. Do you again work purely for your own ends? For the country's – knowing all about its rulers? Or can you segregate your bosses and their leaders from your needs, and perhaps seek knowledge for the sake of the world? It's probably not a conundrum that has hit you before, given its scientific bent, but it's worth looking at what was going on at that time. Which way did Planck walk? Did Heisenberg have principles? Full review...
Slideshow: Memories of a Wartime Childhood by Marjorie Ann Watts
Slideshow may seem an unusual title for a book about growing up during the Second World War, but author Marjorie Ann Watts is quick to explain why it was chosen. Her job as a book illustrator and artist requires astute observation skills and she has what might be known as a 'photographic memory', or a gift for recalling specific scenes from her past in great detail. She explains it this way:
'All I have to do is pull a 'slide' from the accumulated silt of memory...there it is: a varnish-clear image as vivid as the day it was recorded, however long ago.' Full review...
Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower
If one were to describe the Nazi regime with one's own adjectives, I'm sure that sooner or later, after all the ruder and more pejorative emotional ones had been thought of, 'masculine' would come up. Let's face it, it would be a scholar who could name any leading female Nazis beyond Eva Braun and Mrs Goebbels, who nobody I think has ever put at the forefront of actual policy, thinking or actions. But there were females at the front – many thousands, it seems, taking themselves away from Germany with ideas of the Lebensraum being opened up out East; moving their skills as either secretary, nurse, teacher or just willing Hausfrau to the occupied territories, where… well, that would be telling. This book is the one to read if you want that told, but it doesn't do it in the most brilliant way. Full review...
Hitler's Last Witness: The Memoirs of Hitler's Bodyguard by Rochus Misch
I am proud to declare an interest in all things Holocaust, one of the key areas of which was the last days of Hitler – the Downfall, if you like, way before youtube satirists. So this book, from the man who for some unspecified years was the last eye-witness to have been in the Fuhrerbunker at the end of the Nazi regime, was always going to be a great read. It remained that even after the foreword dismissed its own book, pointing out differences here to the canon of thought about the timings etc of April/May 1945, and declaring the author somewhat naïve in not being so aware, circumspect and authoritative about the major points of WWII. Full review...
The Making of Home by Judith Flanders
In 1900 a young girl in a strange land told the people around her that she had decided she no longer wanted to live in their lovely country, but would much rather return to the ‘dry, grey’ place she had come from, because there was ‘no place like home’. The girl was Dorothy, while the people around her were the citizens of Oz – and, yes, it was all fiction, the creation of author L. Frank Baum. Nevertheless he had put into words something which many people deeply felt but had not yet expressed. Full review...
Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die by Alex Werner
It has been over 125 years since the first Sherlock Holmes story was written and since then, the character has been subject to countless interpretations on stage, screen and in literature. Such was the popularity of the famous detective, that his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, attempted on more than one occasion to 'free himself' from Holmes, the most notable example being his 'death' at Reichenbach Falls. Readers were most upset and Doyle eventually bowed to public pressure, reviving the eponymous hero for further adventures. In the years that followed, Holmes took on a life independent of his author, as his stories were adapted for stage and film. An unconcerned Doyle allowed free rein with the character, famously saying: 'You may marry or murder or do whatever you like with him.' Full review...
Witches: James I and the English Witch Hunts by Tracy Borman
Gossip is as old as human nature, but generally harmless. It was a different matter in medieval times, when what might start as relatively innocuous tittle-tattle could breed suspicion, paranoia, and ultimately accusations against women and girls of witchcraft. More often than not, it would end in a horrible death by execution - drowning, strangulation on the gallows, or being burned alive. The unsavoury business of witchcraft trials in early seventeenth-century England was encouraged by King James I, who with his obsession with and knowledge of the black arts and his firm belief in the threat of demonic forces believed that witches had been responsible for fierce storms that had come close to drowning his future bride on her voyage by sea from Scotland to England. Full review...
Rest in Pieces by Bess Lovejoy
All sorts has happened to deceased famous people - stolen, sold, stuffed, etc. Bess Lovejoy has collected the fates of the celebrity deceased and tells them here - in a cracking little book that will be ideal as a stocking filler or small gift for those who enjoy slightly gruesome tales. Full review...
The Last Escaper by Peter Tunstall
The Last Escaper opens differently to many of the great escape biographies that were released soon after the war as it is told some 70 years later. Peter Tunstall was an RAF pilot who was shot down and spent many years as a Prisoner Of War across occupied Europe, including in Colditz. He lived through the war, but also lived through many decades of peace. Will these years of the relative quiet life lesson the tales of bravery and dare doing of the war? Of course not! Full review...
The Shop Girls by Elee Seymour
Heyworth's Department Store.
The chances are, you have never heard of it before. I know that I hadn't, before I picked up this book. And yet, there was a time, not so long ago, when everyone in Cambridge would have been familiar with Heyworth's, even if they couldn't afford to shop there themselves. Smaller than most department stores, it offered high-end fashion, childrenswear and millinery, with a staff of smiling, smartly-dressed sales assistants ready to cater to the customer's every whim. It seems sad that with the passing of generations, the very existence of the store seems to have slipped away from the collective consciousness; ask most people in Cambridge if they remember Heyworth's and the majority response would be negative. Full review...
Washington Journal: reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's downfall by Elizabeth Drew
In early August 1974 I was in what was then Yugoslavia. There was a group of us, all interested in the political news, but essentially cut off from the outside world apart from the previous day's English newspapers which arrived mid morning. It was on the 11th of August that one of our number dashed onto the beach yelling He's resigned. He's RESIGNED!!! No one had any need to ask who he was talking about. We'd all been following the news about Richard Nixon's doings and wrongdoings for a year, with no one certain that he would be forced out of office. The investigative journalism (oh, for the days when journalists uncovered rather than merely covered) was done by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, but some of the most insightful reportage came from Elizabeth Drew writing for The New Yorker. Full review...
Golden Parasol by Wendy Law-Yone
If you look her up Wendy Law-Yone is described as a Burmese-born American author. That Burmese-born American might be an accurate description of her current citizenship, but it barely hints at the ethnic mix of her heritage, nor of her personal closeness (through her father) to her original homeland's struggle for freedom and democracy. Full review...
The Great War: The People's Story by Isobel Charman
During this centenary year, we have seen many ways of telling the history of the conflict which broke out among the Great Powers of Europe and soon involved all four corners of the world. This volume, based on a recent ITV series of the same title, approaches it from an angle which I have not seen before. It follows the course of events over the four years through the letters, memoirs and diaries of about a dozen individuals as it presents their story against the background of fighting on the continental mainland, and of bereavement, shortages and more at home. Full review...
Elizabeth of York by Alison Weir
Elizabeth of York could have ruled England were she not a woman and were she not born in the fifteenth century. Oldest daughter of Edward IV, she was the heiress of the Yorkist dynasty after the death of Richard III at Bosworth (and her own younger brothers in the Tower of London). Henry VII, the first Tudor king and victor by conquest, had at best a tenuous claim to the English throne. He legitimised it by his marriage to Elizabeth and proclaimed it through the Tudor rose, that joining of the emblems of York and Lancaster. Elizabeth's marriage to Henry produced one of our most famous kings in Henry VIII. Full review...
A Broken World: Letters, diaries and memories of the Great War by Sebastian Faulks and Hope Wolf
Sebastian Faulks and Dr Hope Wolf have expertly brought together this far-reaching collection of memories, diaries, letters and postcards written during and after the First World War. While Faulks is the author of novels such as Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, Dr Hope Wolf is a research fellow in English at the University of Cambridge, whose doctoral research focused on archives at the Imperial War Museum. The combination of such a respected author, whose most famous (and arguably his best) novel is set in the First World War, and an academic whose expertise is the in the same area, means that this fascinating collection hits all the right notes. It's commemorative, poignant and very human. Full review...
The Greatest Escape: How one French community saved thousands of lives from the Nazis by Peter Grose
We've read it before and been grateful, and now we can read it again, and for the same reasons – educational, entertainment, moralistic – we can be grateful. We've probably all heard how one place or circumstance – most famously, Oscar Schindler's factory – led to a major underhand rescue operation to keep Jews from being the victims of the Final Solution in World War Two. This book is a further example, but one of a whole French district being complicit in helping defy the Nazi authorities. Centred around Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the heart of southern France, a very rural community based around Huguenot Protestants with their own experiences of religious persecution decided en masse to act as shelter for a whole host of people – mostly children rescued from transit and internment camps elsewhere in France, and the Jewish victims of the Vichy government rules demanding they be stateless or, worse, victims of a certain one-way train ride. But beyond becoming an idyllic place to hide out in plain view, the towns and villages also conspired to actively export the Jews themselves – to places of safety. Full review...
The Mill Girls by Tracy Johnson
The Mill Girls is a collection of true stories based on interviews with women who worked at Lancashire's cotton mills during the war years. Leaving school at the tender age of 14, the girls were thrown headlong into the world of work, at a time when jobs were plentiful and the benefits culture we know today was non-existent. The choice was a simple one: work or starve. Conditions were harsh, the mills noisy, dangerous and dirty and pay was low. Despite this, many of the women look back at their time 'in mill' with warm fondness and nostalgia. Full review...
Money: The Unauthorised Biography by Felix Martin
Occasionally books are not exactly what they seem. When I picked this up, read the blurb and began the contents inside, I was expecting a kind of biography or history of money through the ages. The opening chapter, a brief sketch of the economy of the Pacific island of Yap and how it worked, seemed to confirm this. It tells us how in the late nineteenth century Yap, east of the Philippine Islands, had an unwieldy coinage consisting of stone wheels around 12ft in diameter, called fei. The population did not carry these around, let alone own them like we possess pounds and pence, as they were part of a sophisticated system of credit management. Full review...
