==History==
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{{newreview
|author=Frances Stonor Saunders
|title=The Woman Who Shot Mussolini
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571239773</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Josephine Wilkinson
|summary=Despite being very descriptive, the title of 'The Templars: History and Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons' still doesn't cover the full scope of Michael Haag's book. Notwithstanding its relatively modest page count, ''Templars'' not only manages to place the fascinating tale of the Knights' astonishing rise and spectacular fall in a rich historical context, but also provides an entertaining account of the Templars' 'afterlife': from the Masonic lore of the title to novels, films and games to conspiracy theories. There is also a travel guide and good list of source materials for further reading.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681537</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew Wheatcroft
|title=The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=The battle for Europe which Andrew Wheatcroft describes in such vivid detail is the culmination of a power struggle between the Ottoman empire, based in Constantinople, and the Habsburg domain in Vienna, which had lasted for around 250 years prior to the final solution. These two centuries and more of struggle between them led to the decision by the sultan of Turkey, hungry for more territory, and his ministers in 1682 to lead their army against the Habsburgs at Vienna with the ultimate objective of capturing the city, and the ensuing siege a year later. Some historians have seen this as a crucial moment in the history of conflicts between the east and the west, although others consider its status as one of the defining events somewhat over-estimated. Whatever the truth of the matter, the book that tells the story is a vivid chronicle of war in the 17th century.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844137414</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matthew Cobb
|title=The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=''Allo, Allo'', ''The Secret Army'' and numerous films have painted a fairly romantic picture of the resistance — beret-wearing men and women who dart about blowing up trains and shooting Nazis. The reality, according to Matthew Cobb's ''The Resistance'', was somewhat different.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737123X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Downing
|title=Sealing Their Fate: 22 Days That Decided the Second World War
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=In this detailed volume, David Downing makes a convincing argument that in the brief 22-day period between 17 November and 8 December 1941, the actions of the various Axis powers and their Allied opponents marked the beginning of the end of a war that still had several years left to run – the turning point famously described by Churchill as ''the end of the beginning''. After Pearl Harbor, America entered the war, making it a true world war - though it was actually Hitler that declared war on America, ironically – on 11 December, just after these events take place. ''Sealing Their Fate'' opens with the launch of the Japanese fleet and ends with that same fleet's attack on Pearl Harbor, but it's not specifically about Japan and America.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847371310</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard D Ryder
|title=Nelson, Hitler and Diana
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Was Horatio Nelson, a navy officer of great renown, forever thrusting himself into the limelight, doing it because his mother passed away when he was nine? Was Hitler overly affected by his father dying in a time of paternal disapproval, and a kind of Oedipal reaction to being the man in the house making him suffer when she herself died? And can Diana, Princess of Wales' parents' divorce lead to a claim she was a sufferer of borderline personality disorder?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845401662</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=William Blades, Randolph G. Adams, Bagher Bachchha (Editor)
|title=Enemies of Books
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=William Blades, a Victorian printer and bibliographer, is best remembered as the biographer of William Caxton. He also wrote this very concise work on the threats to books from such enemies as fire, water, gas and heat, dust and neglect, and ignorance and bigotry. In the process he slips in several interesting historical facts. The chapter on fire notes the vast destruction of books in the Great Fire of London in 1666, as well as in the Gordon Riots just over a century later, and closer to his own time, the destruction of a priceless law library at Strasbourg, ravaged by the shells of the German army during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904799361</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul R Spiring (Editor)
|title=The World of Vanity Fair - Bertram Fletcher Robinson
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Every now and then, you comes across a really sumptuous book, where just turning and looking at the pages takes you into another world.
Such is the case with this one. ''Vanity Fair'' was a gentler Victorian forerunner of ''Private Eye''. Subtitled, ''A Weekly'' ''Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares'', it appeared between 1868 and 1914. Like the more successful, longer-lasting ''Punch'', it began with radical aspirations, intending ''to expose what'' [the editor] ''perceived to be the'' ''vanities of the elite social classes''. However its satire was gently humorous rather than malicious, and almost everybody who was portrayed in its pages was flattered.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312535</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Phil Robins
|title=Can I Come Home, Please?
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Using the sound archives of the Imperial War Museum and other primary sources, this affecting volume gives an overview of the progress of Nazism as seen through the eyes of children in different parts of Europe. The simplicity of the language used in the transcribed interviews means it is accessible to children from Y6, yet remains useful to GCSE students as a succinct, linear timeline of WW2.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407109030</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Keith Miller
|title=St Peter's (Wonders of the World)
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=It is huge: not only in space but in time and structure; and in the non-material sphere of the complex interplay of meanings, symbols and significances. Miller's book, intentionally combining cultural and political history, art criticism and travel writing, manages to reflect that hugeness without weighting the reader down with too much austere detail.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861979088</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Mullen and James Munson
|title=The Smell of the Continent
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=When Frances Trollope landed at Calais in the 1830s, she overheard a conversation between two travellers, the younger commenting on the dreadful smell, the older and more experienced telling him it was ''the smell of'' ''the continent''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230741908</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennifer Worth
|title=Farewell To The East End
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I am interested in social history and, as a mother, the job of midwives fascinates me. Combining these two subjects, ''Farewell to the East End'' is a riveting read. The author Jennifer Worth was a midwife and nurse, working with the nuns at Nonnatus House in the East End of London and this volume (her third book on this topic) covers the 1950s.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297844652</amazonuk>
}}
