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...
How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On: Real-life stories from the Home Front by Anton Rippon
My generation is now at saturation point with 'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters and all the accompanying variations. So much so, I was surprised to learn from this book was that the now ubiquitous poster was never actually distributed. The poster had been planned as part of a campaign to raise morale, but after they were printed, the government felt it would have been seen as patronising, given that Britons were doing exactly that without the government message to bolster them up. Full review...
Tudor: The Family Story by Leanda de Lisle
With so many recent books published on various aspects of Tudor history, it becomes harder to find a new angle or approach to the subject. Leanda de Lisle has thus pulled off the almost-impossible. Her starting point is not the battle of Bosworth and Henry Tudor’s claiming of the throne as King Henry VII in 1485, but an event nearly fifty years earlier, the death and funeral of Catherine de Valois. The widow of King Henry V, Catherine married secondly the Welsh squire Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur, known to posterity as Owen Tudor. Their elder son Edmund later married Margaret Beaufort, a descendant of John of Gaunt, one of King Edward III’s several sons, and it was the only child of this union, born when his mother was a mere girl thirteen years of age, who would become the victor on Bosworth Field. Full review...
101 Places in Italy : A Private Grand Tour by Francis Russell
Initially I struggled to describe this book. It's not a guide book: maps are intended only to give you a rough idea of where the towns, cities and villages are - even major rivers are not shown. There are no opening times of museums or other details which the visitor might need and whilst it's a tremendous help to the tourist there's a sense throughout the book of their being people who are best avoided if at all possible. November and February seem to be the best months for your visit in many cases. The 101 places you'll visit in the book are given no wider importance than the works of art within them. Finally I accepted that the subtitle of the book - A Private Grand Tour was the most appropriate. Full review...
Steaming to Victory: How Britain's Railways Won the War by Michael Williams
Soon after the end of the First World War, the British railways entered what is generally regarded as their golden age, with the heyday of the ‘Big Four’ companies, the LNER (London and North Eastern), LMS (London, Midlands and Scottish), GWR (Great Western) and Southern Railways. By 1939 they were beginning to lose their virtual monopoly of land-based transport to lorries, buses and coaches. Nevertheless, as war became increasingly inevitable, they played a vital part in the preparation to keep the country moving, keeping industry and the war effort supplied, helping in the evacuation of Dunkirk, or as their press office put it in a pamphlet of 1943, 'tackling the biggest job in transport history'. Full review...
The Boys In The Boat: An Epic Journey to the Heart of Hitler's Berlin by Daniel James Brown
You see, Jesse Owens had it easy – all he had to do was run fast. Alright, he did have to face unknown hardship, heinous prejudice at home and abroad, and make sure he was fast enough to outdo the rest of his compatriots then the world's best to win gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but others who wished to do the same had to do more. People such as those rowers in the coxed eights squad – people such as young Joe Rantz. He certainly had to face hardship, the prejudice borne by those in the moneyed east coast yacht clubs against an upstart from the NW USA, and when he got to compete he had to use so many more muscles, and operate at varying tempi, with the temperament of the weather and water against him, all in perfect synchronicity with seven other beefcakes. Despite rowing being the second greatest ticket at those Games, Joe's story is a lot less well known, and probably a lot more entertaining. Full review...
The Last Days of Detroit: Motor Cars, Motown and the Collapse of an Industrial Giant by Mark Binelli
Moving back to his native Detroit, Mark Binelli tries to see where it all went wrong for a city which was once America's capitalist dream town but has shrunk more significantly than anywhere else in the country over recent years. How did this happen, and what effect has it had on the residents there? Is the decline irreversible, or can those who want to bring about a changed and improved Detroit succeed? Full review...
Penny Loaves and Butter Cheap: Britain in 1846 by Stephen Bates
Until I picked up this book, I would never have really thought of 1846 as a pivotal year in British history. Stephen Bates has proved convincingly in these pages that if it was not exactly a watershed one, it nevertheless marked an era of change. Full review...
Books that Changed the World: The 50 Most Influential Books in Human History by Andrew Taylor
Oh the pleasure when, as a book reviewer, one can simply point to the title and say – 'yup, that'. Or, I suppose, as in the non-existent follow-up, Adverts That Changed the World, simply repeat the mantra 'it does exactly what it says on the tin'. This paperback edition of the six year old original, fresh with several typos they had time to iron out alongside putting in Seamus Heaney's departure, makes life even easier, given that subtitle. I'm sure the more bibliophilic are already sold, and there is little influence I can bear on things. I will, however, soldier on. Full review...
Letters to the Midwife: Correspondence with the author of Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
Jennifer Worth, author of the bestselling Call the Midwife, sadly passed away in May 2011 following a short illness. Her books have gained a great deal of popularity in recent years with their mixture of warmth, sadness and humour based on her experiences working as a midwife in the East End of London. Letters to the Midwife features some of the treasured letters received by Worth from former work colleagues and fans of her books. The resulting book is a rich testament to a life lived fully and to a very special lady whose memories have managed to inspire and touch so many. Full review...
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent by Robert A Caro
It's only a matter of days since I finished listening to The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, the first part of Robert A Caro's definitive work on the President and despite having just spent over forty hours on the book I wanted to learn more. I was torn though - the second book in a series is not often as good as the first and it struck me that these might not be the most exciting years in Johnson's life. Was this book going to be the link which took us on to the more exciting times? Not a bit of it. Full review...
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert A Caro
Lyndon Baines Johnson was the 36th President of the United States, preceded by John F Kennedy and succeeded by Richard Nixon, with both being remembered most for the way they left office. His five-year term in office was overshadowed at the start by the Kennedy assassination and increasingly blighted by the debacle which was Vietnam, but there was something about Johnson which always intrigued me: how does a poor boy from Texas hill country without an exceptional (or even 'good') education become president of the United States? 'The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power' tells you all that you need to know. Full review...
London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough
The concept of people from overseas countries buying and owning old and long-established British industries and works of art is not new. Yet one of the most unusual sales of this kind occurred in March 1968. It was a time of British economic crisis (where and when have we heard that before) and the ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaign, and a time when the concept of heritage was unfashionable and the authorities seemed to attach more value to modernity than to relics of the Regency and the Victorian age. Full review...
Born in Siberia by Tamara Astafieva, Michael Darlow and Debbie Slater
I tend to shy away from reviewing book titles, but this time it seems appropriate – here it's a title that doesn't tell you the half of the story. As much as Tamara Astafieva was born in Siberia, and returned there several times, for many different reasons and with many very different outcomes, this is much more of a picture of the Soviet Union as we in Britain think of it – Moscow, a bit of Saint Petersburg, and little else. That's not a fault – and again it's not half of the story. The story here is so complex, so rich with detail and incident, and itself came about in such an unusual way, that any summary of the book has its work cut out in defining its many qualities. Full review...
Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!: A World without World War I by Richard Ned Lebow
On the first page of this book, we are given a summary of events from August 2014. Queen Elizabeth is hosting a reception for Prince Harry and his bride, a niece of the German Kaiser at Balmoral, while the governor-general of India is involved in preparations for the next Commonwealth Games. This brief glimpse of a fantasy world is followed by a swift resumé of the twentieth century, as everything actually happened, and of changes in the world order wrought by both world wars. Chapter two tells of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie at Sarajevo in June 1914, the final catalyst which precipitated the First World War. Full review...
Hundred Days by Nick Lloyd
Nick Lloyd is a historian. Well, actually he's a lecturer in Defence Studies at Kings College London - based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College in Shrivenham, Wiltshire. Full review...
Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz by Thomas Harding
This dual biography concerns, as the title makes clear, two men. One was from an inherently German, rich Jewish family – they had a powerboat so he could waterski on the lake at their country cottage – who fled the rise of the Nazis early in the 1930s, and got away moderately lightly, only losing properties and a large and successful medical career. The other was from an inherently German family, who signed up for First World War service before his age, but only really wanted to be a farmer and family man, yet who ended up running probably history's worst slaughterhouse. Both had a connection and a shared destiny that was largely unknown before this book was researched, there's a chance that both of them had the blood of one man and only one man directly on their hands from WWII service, and both of them – again, as the title makes clear – are given the dignity of the familiar, first name throughout this incredible book. Full review...
Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs by Bob Brier
There have been so many books written on the subject of Egyptology, it would be hard to imagine that anything new could be said on the matter. However, TV presenter and researcher Bob Brier, a self-confessed Egyptophile, has managed to approach the topic from a unique perspective by allowing us a glimpse of his fascinating collection of all things Egyptian. The collection is an eclectic mix of objects, including jewellery, private letters from Howard Carter, tobacco packaging, books, posters and tea-sets. In Brier’s collection, his ornate Josiah Wedgwood Egyptian set sits proudly on the shelf next to Barbie of the Nile and a cheap King Tut cologne bottle. As he puts it: 'we all know that something can be so bad that it’s good. The true collector has no shame.' Full review...
Fred's War by Andrew Davidson
Fred's War is the story of the 1st Cameronians actions in the 1st world war from 1914 -1915. The pictures themselves tell their own story. They show the happy young and carefree faces become gaunt, lined and battle-worn as the war progresses, although there is still laughter at times. The simple warmth of a roaring fire brings such obvious pleasure, that in a way the joy itself is heart-breaking. Photos like this make one wonder however they ever coined the name The Great War. This looks anything but great. It shows the desolation of ploughed fields which should have been planted to provide nourishment, instead yielding only a harvest of death and despair. It shows men wading in water nearly to their knees or scurrying like animals in the muck. The pictures show the true horror of trench warfare in a way words can not, but thankfully they show only the lulls between battles. There are no scenes of horror as men are blown to bits. I think the men of this time had too much respect to photograph comrades in the throes of death, or in agony with wounds. This is not the horror of the battlefield or the immediate aftermath, but instead of mind-numbing cold, hunger and filth - of living conditions so bleak death itself might not seem such a bad option. But it isn't all doom and gloom. There are happier scenes as Fred is an officer and billeted comfortably at times. There is also the delight of a death narrowly missed and simple scenes of camaraderie. Full review...
Winter by Adam Gopnik
In this collection of five essays, each one offering a unique and fascinating perspective on the season of winter, Adam Gopnik takes the reader on a captivating journey, exploring history, art and society, through Romantic Winter, Radical Winter, Recuperative Winter, Recreational Winter and Remembering Winter. In each essay, Gopnik focuses on one or two central themes, whilst also touching on surrounding ideas. For example, in Romantic Winter his central topics are art and poetry, however, issues such as changing society, technology, sex and culture are also explored, in relation to these pivotal notions. He also includes two sections featuring collections of artwork to illustrate his viewpoints, which add a charming, individual touch to this book. Full review...
The Assassination of JFK Minute by Minute by Jonathan Mayo
President John F Kennedy had been warned about going to Dallas - he himself referred to it as 'nut country' - but, conscious of the upcoming 1964 presidential elections, he needed to bring some support from the city onside and that was why he and the First Lady found themselves in the motorcade which swept into Dealey Plaza on 22 November 1963. There can be few people who are not aware of what happened next, but Jonathan Mayo has presented a chronology of events over the next four days (four days, three murders, hundreds of stories, as the cover says) demonstrating the pressure under which the officials involved were working and the dreadful impact of what happened.. Full review...
The Fourteenth Day: JFK and the Aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis by David G Coleman
The commonly-held view of history would have us believe that the Cuban Missile Crisis began in mid-October 1962 and concluded on 28 October, with the world heaving a collective sigh of relief and moving on to think of other things. The truth is, of course, rather different and the crisis rumbled on for weeks and months to come, occasionally almost bubbling to the boil again as Kennedy and Krushchev fenced with each other. Historian David G Coleman has used the secret White House recordings to take us into the Oval Office and listen to what really went on. Full review...
The War that Ended Peace: How Europe abandoned peace for the First World War by Margaret MacMillan
One could argue that the main title of this book is slightly questionable. Throughout the half-century or so before the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, Europe had rarely been free from conflict, with the Franco-Prussian, Graeco-Turkish and Balkan wars for a start. Nevertheless, the majority of the continent was at peace with itself and most of its neighbours during this period. Full review...
Parkland by Vincent Bugliosi
Parkland is not just a book about history but a book with a history. Vincent Bugliosi published Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 2007 with much of the book being based on his preparation for a mock trial of Lee Harvey Oswald which was shown on British television. This book was an exhaustive look at what happened in Dallas and at subsequent events such as the trial of Jack Ruby and the conspiracy theories which have abounded in the intervening fifty years. Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy was published in June 2008 and is - as the title suggests - restricted to what happened on 22 November 1963 and the following three days. Parkland is the film tie-in version of that book. Full review...
Canton Elegy: A Father's Letter of Sacrifice, Survival and Love by Stephen Jin-Nom Lee and Howard Webster
Stephen Jin-Nom Lee, known in his childhood as Ah Nom, was born early in the twentieth century in the village of Dai Waan in rural China. His father died when he was young and he lived with his grandmother, mother and 'Little Uncle', who was only a matter of months older than Ah Nom. They'd become friends as they grew older, but when his Grandfather returned after a long absence in America there as a distinct rivalry between the two. Then Grandfather revealed his reason for returning home - he intended to take the boys to America to be educated. It was a wonderful opportunity and Ah Nom left the village and his mother not knowing when he would see either again. Full review...
The King in the North: The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria by Max Adams
Born in 604 and around for only 38 years, Oswald didn't live that long but he packed a lot in. Born into Bernician royalty, Oswald the teenager had to flee with his mother and siblings when his father Aelfrith was killed at the Battle of the River Idle. Any noble wanting to beat his way to the top would naturally kill Oswald's family and so an obscure upbringing in Ireland seemed the answer. However, Oswald grows strong and bides his time until he comes home and clears his own path, ruling Northumbria for 8 years until his own untimely demise. During those 8 years he united kingdoms, helped establish Christianity and became the inspiration of writers as disparate as St Bede and Tolkien. As Oswald became St Oswald he left behind as many legends as historical events and this book seeks to separate the man from the myth while explaining the time we call the Dark Ages in the brutally separated lands that we now call Great Britain and Ireland. Full review...
Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang
It’s easy to see why Jung Chang selected Cixi as the focal point for her study of China’s tumultuous modern history. Cixi is a truly fascinating woman, one of few human beings whose existence can be honestly said to have shaped the course of history. Cixi’s biography is not only a fascinating read due to her own political machinations, but also because of the immense transformations that occurred in China during her lifetime. Jung Chang offers a detailed exploration of the period from Cixi’s entrance to court in 1852 to her death in 1908, during which time the ancient dynastic customs of China gave way to the advent of the industrial age. Full review...