History
Lost Voices from the Titanic: The Definitive Oral History by Nick Barratt
As Barratt points out in the opening pages, there are literally thousands of titles available about the sinking of the Titanic, at the time the largest, most expensive and most luxurious ship ever built. His aim in this volume is to bridge the gap between another forensic examination of how it sank, and yet another re-run of what he calls the familiar stories of heroism and tragedy from literature in the public domain to provide the human story behind the disaster. Full review...
Leonardo's Legacy: How Da Vinci Reinvented the World by Stefan Klein
This excellent combination of science history and biography starts with the most populist and some of the most awkwardly scientific. Basically it throws modern-day science at the Mona Lisa, which you might think is a little unfair – can she cope with being analysed, and the neuroscience we now know used in interpreting her? Of course she can – she’s the world’s best-known masterpiece of Italian art, and she’s survived much worse. Klein’s approach fully works, when we see also the science da Vinci did know and that he worked on himself, which all helps us know partly why the truths of La Gioconda are still unknowable. Full review...
Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language by Robert McCrum
We British tend to forget just how insignificant we are.
Tiny geographically. Tiny in population. Tiny, whatever we tell ourselves, on the world stage.
Yet our language is spoken in various forms worldwide by approximately four billion people; about a third of the world's population. How did that happen? This is what Robert McCrum attempts to explain. Full review...
Guilt About the Past by Bernhard Schlink
Consider, if you will, guilt. You might have it tainting you, as 'beyond the perpetrators, every person who stands in solidarity with them and maintains solidarity after the fact becomes entangled'. The link might not strictly be a legal one, but concern 'norms of religion and morals, etiquette and custom as well as day-to-day communications and interactions'. Hence a collective guilt like no other - that witnessed in Germany. 'The assumption that membership to a people engenders solidarity is something Germans of my generation do not easily like to accept', we read. However difficult it might have been back then in its day, Germany had to physically renounce anything to do with Nazism, to actively 'opt-out' of connections to avoid the solidarity seen connecting the whole nation like a toxic spider web. And since then it's linked in all the children, in a bequeathal of guilt. Full review...
The Magnetic North: Travels in the Arctic by Sara Wheeler
The title of this book suggests another travel book about adventure in the frozen north, but Sara Wheeler mixes her tales of her own travels with some history of polar exploration and a serious examination of the impact of visitors and of those who wish to exploit the Arctic’s natural resources on the region and its people. Rather than setting off on another expedition to reach the North Pole, she travels around bits of the Arctic divided between different countries and governments, including Chukotka (Russia), Alaska (USA), Canada, Greenland, Svalbard (Norway) and Lapland (Russia and Scandinavia). There is a huge amount of material in the book but Wheeler organises and presents it in a very readable, accessible style. Full review...
The Reluctant Tommy: An Extraordinary Memoir of the First World War by Ronald Skirth and Duncan Barrett
Ronald Skirth was one of many young Englishmen of nineteen caught up in the First World War. He joined the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1916, was promoted to Corporal, and sent to the western front. Like most of his contemporaries, when he went he was an unquestioning servant of King and country, fighting for what he believed was right. On the battlefields of Flanders, one day he came across the body of Hans, a German soldier the same age, if not younger. The dead man's hand was clutching a photograph of his girlfriend, who could almost have been the twin sister of Ella, Skirth's own sweetheart. Like two of his friends who had just been killed, Hans had died as a result of the stupidity of others. Full review...
The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War by Juliet Nicolson
As the author says in her introduction, the 'great silence' of the title was that which followed the 'incessant thunder' of the Great War. There are three crucial dates in her narrative, all specific days in three successive Novembers. The first was when the guns fell silent in 1918, the second was that of the first two-minute silence in memory of the fallen one year later, and the third was when the Unknown Soldier was lowered into silence beneath the floor in Westminster Abbey, another year on. These act as a framework around which she tells the story of the silence of grief which affected everyone in various ways during the first two years of peace. Full review...
The Lotus Quest by Mark Griffiths
Mark Griffiths is one of Britain's leading plant experts. I know this because his brief biog in the front of The Lotus Quest tells me so; just as it tells me that he is the editor of The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening 'the largest work on horticulture ever published'. His prior works list includes five other plant book credits, three of them for the RHS. I shall take all of this on trust, since attempts to find out more about the author and his background through the usual internet search mechanisms has failed miserably. He remains as elusive as the sacred flower that is the subject of this latest work: the lotus. Full review...
The Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown
'A source of hope for a radiant future or…the greatest threat on the face of the earth'.
Whichever of these descriptions you would apply to Communism you will find Archie Brown's detailed and largely objective study enlightening and engrossing. On one level, this is a chronological description of how a political force grew to dominate a third of the world's population then virtually disappeared within a period of less than a century. Full review...
Churchill's Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain by John Welshman
As a little girl I was fascinated by stories from the second world war. My Nan would tell me tales of her work doing welding, my mum's uncle had exciting adventure stories from his years in the RAF, and the book Carrie's War was one I returned to again and again. So I was intrigued by this title which looks at the stories of thirteen children and adults through World War Two, from the first wave of evacuations through to the end of the war. Full review...
Trautmann's Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend by Catrine Clay
'You have to learn to be hard men, to accept sacrifice without ever succumbing'. Such did Hitler say at the Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies in the 1930s. He probably did not have in mind playing in goal at a FA Cup final with a broken neck, such is the lifetime of difference between the two references. But that lifetime, as packed and varied as it was, is in the pages of this ever-interesting and swiftly-devoured book. Full review...
Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart by Chris Skidmore
When Elizabeth I ascended the throne in November 1558, everyone's dominant concern was the matter of her taking an appropriate husband and securing the succession. The man most likely to become her husband was Robert Dudley, whom she made her Master of the Horse and entrusted with considerable responsibility for her coronation festivities. The fact that he was already married to Amy Robsart did little to quell the speculation, especially since she was believed to be dying of breast cancer. Full review...
The Lost Mona Lisa by R A Scotti
One of the few things I remember from those writers' courses and advice books – and I can hear from here you wished I remembered more of them – was the merit in being aware of anniversaries, especially in your area of expertise, and having the ability to sell articles concerning historical events linked into centenaries, modern comparisons, and so on. Well, here is the book equivalent, and although it's early – it's looking back on the summer of 1911 – this stands as quality enough to deny any latecomers shelf room. Full review...
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
In 1927, the Ford Motor company bought a huge tract of land in Brazil, for the purpose of the company growing its own rubber for use in making its cars. They planted rubber trees and built a factory and houses, and a number of top managers from the company were posted to Fordlandia to run the operation. Huge amounts of money were pumped into Fordlandia, and Ford made great claims for their plans. However, the project was a spectacular failure, and it lasted less than twenty years. Full review...
A Rainbow in the Night by Dominique Lapierre
A book integrating otherwise piecemeal news stories picked up over the past forty years into a coherent explanation is always welcome. This book explores South Africa's history and development, from the earliest Dutch arrivals in 1652 to the first racially integrated elections in 1994. Full review...
The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare by Doug Stewart
In the late 18th century, keen to impress the Shakespeare-obsessed father who paid him little attention, 19 year old William Henry Ireland forged a couple of Elizabethan documents to show him. With the older man completely taken in, his child then pretended he'd found a trunk full of lost artefacts belonging to the Bard – love letters to Anne Hathaway, a declaration of his Protestant faith, the manuscript of King Lear, and even entirely new plays. Ireland fooled not only his father, but also many of the prominent Londoners of the time, including Robert Southey, James Boswell, and the future William IV. Full review...
Dubai: The Story of the World's Fastest City by Jim Krane
In the 1950's, Dubai contained just a few thousand inhabitants scraping a living. By 1985, it had grown, but Sheikh Mohammed was still laughed at when he said that he wanted to make it a popular destination for tourists. With the addition of artificial islands, the world's tallest building, an indoor ski slope, and much more, it's now one of the world's foremost cities - but as headlines showed last year, the stellar growth may have been extremely costly, in terms of finances, environmental problems, and the quality of life for some of its inhabitants. Full review...
The Woman Who Shot Mussolini by Frances Stonor Saunders
Most British titled families of the 19th and 20th centuries have produced their fair share of rebels. Yet few came as close to changing the course of European history as the Honourable Violet Gibson, one of eight children of Baron Ashbourne, a Protestant Anglo-Irish peer and MP in Disraeli's government during the 1870s. Full review...
The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn by Josephine Wilkinson
Before her marriage to King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn had already been courted by three suitors, any of whom might have become her husband - and possibly saved her from her eventual end on the scaffold. The first was her Irish cousin James Butler, later Earl of Ormond, whom she was at one time intended to marry in order to settle a family dispute over the title and estates of the Earldom of Ormond. After their marriage negotiations came to an end in the face of legal obstacles, she became betrothed to Henry Percy, heir to the Duke of Northumberland. With a little help from the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke, who had little time for his son, insisted that any idea of marriage between them should be dismissed forthwith. Soon after this the poet Thomas Wyatt became enamoured of her, but by this time there was fierce competition from his sovereign, and her destiny was sealed. Full review...
Dancing to the Precipice : Lucie De La Tour Du Pin and the French Revolution by Caroline Moorehead
Two hundred years ago, with the fall of the monarchy and the Napoleonic wars, France underwent one cataclysmic change after another. There were many who witnessed and experienced the volatile age at first hand, but few left a more detailed record than the subject of this biography, Lucie-Henriette Dillon, Marquise Marchioness de La Tour du Pin. Full review...
William and Mary: Heroes of the Glorious Revolution by John Van der Kiste
At school I remember spending a lot of time on the Tudors and the early Stuarts – obviously great favourites of the history teacher and then galloping unceremoniously through the intervening years until we reached another meaningful period – the Victorian era. The importance of William and Mary was completely overlooked in favour of a quick mention of the fact that William wasn't in direct line of succession to the throne and Mary had never wanted to marry him in the first place. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as 'tables'. Full review...
When Mongol leader, Khubilai Khan, achieved what his Grandfather Genghis had failed to do in conquering China, he inherited the world's largest and most sophisticated navy. However, in attempting to utilise this to expand his empire further to Java, Vietnam and mainly Japan, he lost the entire armada in a few short years. New marine archeological evidence from Japan, ironically with the site discovered in the 1990s in the construction of new defences from the weather, has raised questions on the traditional view that the defeat of the two Japanese invasion forces of 1274 and particlularly 1281 were solely due to the intervention of the weather and what Japanese culture claim was a Kamikaze (or divine wind) summoned by the Gods. Full review...
The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the Roses by David Baldwin
Due to the small amount of surviving personal sources, any book which purports to be a biography of a 15-century subject is almost inevitably going to be more a 'life and times' than a life. In the case of women who were sisters but not sovereigns or consorts themselves, the lack of data will be even more acute. Full review...
The Artist, The Philosopher and The Warrior by Paul Strathern
The interaction between three very different, not to say contrasting, personalities of the Renaissance period sets the scene for what promises to be an intriguing title. In 1502 the paths of Cesare Borgia, notorious son of the equally infamous Pope Alexander VI, Niccolò Machiavelli, the intellectual and diplomat, and Leonardo da Vinci, at the time best known as a military engineer though remembered today primarily as a great artist, were destined to cross. Full review...
Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life by Timothy W Ryback
As the fictional schoolboy hero Nigel Molesworth might have said, 'any fule kno' that Adolf Hitler was notorious for burning books. Nevertheless he was also an avid collector and passionate reader, as around 1200 surviving volumes once in his possession now in the Rare Book Division of the Library of Congress, and a smaller quantity in Brown University, Rhode Island, demonstrate. Among them were world literature classics, such as 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and 'Gulliver's Travels'. He also owned an edition of the collected works of Shakespeare, in hand-tooled Moroccan leather with a gold-embossed eagle flanked by his initials on the spine. The Bard, he once said, was greatly superior to Goethe and Schiller. Full review...
Taking the Medicine by Druin Burch
In 1898, Burch points out that a new drug was developed and marketed for the treatment of tuberculosis by Bayer & Co. TB is such an ancient enemy of man that there is apparently evidence of an earlier strain to be found in Egyptian mummies. The German firm had discovered a chemical that seemed to work well, and patients and indeed their own staff, who were tested seemed to respond well - it was named Heroin - and its addictive effects were at first missed. Full review...
Sweet Water and Bitter: The Ships That Stopped the Slave Trade by Sian Rees
The Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was passed in Britain in March 1807, and the last legal British slave ship left Africa seven months later. Other countries were slow to follow suit. Everyone in Britain knew there would be resistance, and when the abolitionist Granville Sharpe purchased land in Sierra Leone to 'repatriate' freed slaves, Ottobah Cugoana, a former slave living in London, asked if it was possible for 'a fountain to send forth both sweet water and bitter.' Could the slave trade, he wondered, be abolished from West Africa - when West Africa was its source? Full review...
The Isle of Man: Portrait of a Nation by John Grimson
To many of us, the Isle of Man is probably best known for the Tynwald, the annual TT motorcycle races, and as a holiday resort. I must admit that my knowledge of it extended little further than that, and therefore found this book invaluable. In these 550 pages, profusely illustrated with photographs and maps, I imagine that few if any questions on the subject are left unanswered. John Grimson has lived there for nearly forty years, and as well as working with several of the island's local authorities, was active as a long-distance runner and cyclist until his early seventies. Full review...
The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge
The word 'Crusades' has been misappropriated and often used in various other contexts over the passing years. In their original meaning they were a series of holy wars during the medieval era between the Christian and Muslim world, fighting for dominion over the Holy Land between 1095 and 1291 as the defenders of western civilization formed expeditions travelling across the face of the known world from Europe, their sole aim being to conquer and defend an isolated swathe of territory centred on Jerusalem. Full review...
Sons, Servants and Statesmen: The Men in Queen Victoria's Life by John Van der Kiste
Like the first Elizabeth more books than are strictly necessary have been written about Queen Victoria, but John Van der Kiste has taken the unusual step of using the men in her life to illuminate some dark corners which might other wise have remained unexplored. Of course the most famous man in her life, husband and Prince Consort Albert isn't 'son, servant or statesman' as promised by the title of the book, but he established a trend. Victoria, often regarded as a difficult woman to please, would always have a man in her life who would, to a greater or lesser extent, dominate her. Full review...
The Making of Modern Britain: From Queen Victoria to V.E. Day by Andrew Marr
This book, and the BBC TV series which complements it, must confirm Andrew Marr's status as one of the most entertaining and compulsive historian-cum-presenters working today. His previous project, on postwar Britain, was hard to fault, and anyone who enjoyed that will certainly relish this. Full review...
For College, Club & Country - A History of Clifton Rugby Football Club by Patrick Casey and Richard I Hale
Clifton Rugby Football Club can proudly trace its history back to the very emergence of the sport of rugby union. Founded in September 1872, the same year that William Webb Ellis, who is reputed to have been the rebellious Rugby schoolboy who first ran with the ball, died. In reality, it is highly likely that the Webb Ellis story is something of a spin job on behalf of Rugby School, although it did mean that Rugby School was able to impose its rules on the game at a time when most public schools had their own rules for playing versions of the game. Full review...
Modernism: The Lure of Heresy - From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond by Peter Gay
It is impossible not to be impressed by the sheer scope of cultural historian Peter Gay's 2007 study of Modernism, newly released in this paperback edition. He notes in the introduction that it is not a 'comprehensive history' but rather 'a study of its rise, triumphs, and decline'. What is remarkable though, is the attempt to include the whole gamut of artistic fields in this coherent study. Full review...
Jonathan Wild: Conman and Cutpurse by John Van der Kiste
Born towards the end of the seventeenth century Jonathan Wild was to become the eighteenth century's most famous criminal, plying his trade in a rather curious fashion. He was born in Wolverhampton of parents described as mean but honest. It seems likely that he first travelled to London as the servant of a lawyer where he was eventually to settle, leaving his wife and child to fend for themselves. It was whilst serving a term of imprisonment in Wood Street Compter that he mixed with the cream of London's criminal underclass and learned the rudiments of his trade. Full review...
Obama Music by Bonnie Greer
This is an interesting read, but unless I'm missing something, the focus of the book seems a little difficult to grasp. It's best if I start with the author's intentions as set out in her Prologue. It is a mixture of tales of her own life growing up on the South Side, she writes, interspersed with stories and observations about Obama, linking it with the music, musicians and music scene, past and present, including hip hop, country, classical, and rock'n'roll. All of these, she notes, were heard on the President's Inauguration Day. To them she adds the blues, gospel, soul and jazz of the South Side, when the people began to build the great institutions and great solidarity that enabled him to become the most powerful man on the planet. Full review...
1415: Henry V's Year of Glory by Ian Mortimer
The medieval, in fact time-honoured, view of King Henry V as one of England's greatest heroes was propagated though not originated by Shakespeare, and again more recently to some extent by Olivier's portrayal in film. At least one historian has called him the greatest man that ever ruled England. Full review...
The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest Map by Toby Lester
In 2003 a map was bought for $10 million, the highest price ever paid publicly for a historical document, by the Library of Congress, where it is now on permanent public display. No ordinary map, this is sometimes described as America's birth certificate. It is the sole survivor of a thousand copies printed early in the 16th century, and was discovered by accident in some archives in a German castle in 1901. The sale and story behind it intrigued Toby Lester so much that he was inspired to discover more, and this book is the result. Full review...
The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of Portugal by Jenifer Roberts
Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined to become the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them), and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune to be born in during the 'age of reason', when church and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantly. Full review...
The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours After by Steven M Gillon
The assassination of President Kennedy came at a pivotal moment in my life and for more than forty years I've read most of what has been written about the event. It's been of variable quality, but the books fed the curiosity of people entranced by the charismatic young President who died so publicly. I'd come to the point of wondering if there was anything new to be said, but Stephen Gillom has looked at what happened from an unusual and largely overlooked angle – the first twenty four hours of Lyndon Johnson's Presidency. Full review...
A Royal Affair: George III and His Troublesome Siblings by Stella Tillyard
King George III was not the luckiest of English sovereigns. America, and then his sons, in that order, gave him no end of grief, and the last few years of his life were clouded by madness. It is thus often overlooked that, before these troubles arose to haunt this most conscientious monarch, he also had a thankless task in trying to control his siblings. Full review...
When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies by Andy Beckett
Having grown up during the era and followed the major news stories in the papers as they happened, I was fascinated to find everything (well, nearly everything) in the 500-page narrative that comprises this book. It was quite a rocky ride from the election of Edward Heath in June 1970 through the three-day week, record British inflation and the IMF rescue, industrial disputes and picket battles at Saltley and Grunwick, the Gay Liberation Front and the stirrings of the green movement, the rise of Arthur Scargill, and the discovery of North Sea oil. Then there was the survival of James Callaghan's minority administration despite the odds, and thanks largely to his adroit handling of the situation in keeping both Tony Benn and the Lib-Lab pact on board, followed by the winter of discontent, culminating in Thatcher at No 10. Full review...