==History==
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{{newreview
|author=Tony Judt
|title=The Memory Chalet
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=In 2008 the historian Tony Judt was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative disorder that eventually results in complete paralysis for the sufferer. Unable to jot down ideas as they came to him, Judt had to rely on his memory to hold them until he had the chance to dictate his words to somebody else. His memory, which was already good, became exceptional. The progress of the disorder left Judt unable to move, but no mental deterioration or lack of sensation occurred, which he describes as a mixed blessing. He had to endure whole nights lying in the same position, unable to roll over or even to scratch an itch, a prisoner in his own body. To preserve his sanity during these tortuous nights he focussed on events from his own past, linking then with other events and ideas it had never occurred to him were connected. It was during these reveries that the essays in The Memory Chalet were not only conceived, but also developed in their entirety.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434020966</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adrian Johns
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848091516</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stefan Klein
|title=Leonardo's Legacy: How Da Vinci Reinvented the World
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818256</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert McCrum
|title=Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916404</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bernhard Schlink
|title=Guilt About the Past
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905636776</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sara Wheeler
|title=The Magnetic North: Travels in the Arctic
|rating=4.5
|genre=Travel
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516888</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ronald Skirth and Duncan Barrett
|title=The Reluctant Tommy: An Extraordinary Memoir of the First World War
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023074673X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Juliet Nicolson
|title=The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719562562</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Griffiths
|title=The Lotus Quest
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184595100X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Archie Brown
|title=The Rise and Fall of Communism
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary='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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845950674</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Welshman
|title=Churchill's Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=
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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199574413</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Catrine Clay
|title=Trautmann's Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary='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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082884</amazonuk>
}}
