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{{newreview
|title=The Last Battle
|author=Stephen Harding
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=May 4, 1945 saw the unconditional surrender of all German troops in Germany in Northwest Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Bavaria. Berlin had surrendered two days earlier. A few more areas remained officially at war, but even the most diehard supporter must have realised Germany had fallen. The war was over, to most soldiers, although VE day would be delayed for a few more days. But the most implausible battle of the second world war was about to begin. Had ''The Last Battle'' been fiction, I would have scoffed at the unlikely alliance featured in this book as too unbelievable. A final battle played out in isolated Austrian castle was to rescue French VIPs held as honour prisoners. They were to be protected by the oddest ensemble of soldiers ever known. A ranking member of the S.S., a decorated Wehrmacht officer and his troops, the Austrian resistance and a few American soldiers against a suicidal S.S. troop bent on carrying as many killings as possible before the inevitable end.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306822083</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=The Riddle of the Labyrinth
|summary=When did the Norman conquest of England start and end? This generous panoramic history takes a wide sweep of almost the whole of the eleventh century in England, although as the title indicates, the focal point is that pivotal date of 1066. Morris begins his narrative at around the year 1000, a time when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were under threat from the Viking invasions from Alfred and Ethelred the Unready. Having long been vulnerable to raids from Scandinavia, England then had to contend with the same from France. The power struggles that followed the illness and death of the childless Edward the Confessor (who had nominated William of Normandy as his preferred successor in 1051), the apparent seizure of the English throne by Harold Godwinson who then had himself crowned with remarkable haste, the invasion led by Harold’s brother Tostig and Harald Hardrada of Norway and the death of both the latter at Stamford Bridge, are dealt with in painstaking detail.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537443</amazonuk>
}}
