|summary=Most of us see history rather like a cloud. We're aware of the great mass of it, seeing some parts more clearly than others, but perhaps struggling to bring it into a straight line. Some parts we will have studied at school, or read about out of interest but these parts will be balanced by other periods when we will be woefully ignorant of some of the most basic facts. I've studied the Tudors in some depth at various points in my life – but I would struggle to tell you much about the Stuarts. What was needed was a concise history of England in one volume and written for the adult reader who would simply like to be more informed, but not over-burdened.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684617</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bettany Hughes
|title=The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=We don't know much about Socrates. For someone whose ideas are still so relevant so long after his death, his life is something of a mystery. He didn't like to write things down, and so Hughes begins this book by saying that it may have something of a 'Socrates-sized hole' in it. What we do see is the city of Athens, and the hugely important changes which were going on there while Socrates was alive. In Athens we see the beginnings of democracy, the seedlings of some of the ideas that we take for granted today, such as freedom of speech, and the right to a fair trial. This was an important time in the development of modern values, and Socrates was an important man. He was not only a brilliant thinker, he was also a man that didn't quite fit, infuriating to converse with, yet fascinating to be around.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554054</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Derek Wilson
|title=Calamities and Catastrophes: The Ten Absolutely Worst Years in History
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=As Wilson rightly points out, history is generally written by the winners. This book turns the tables by looking at ten of the worst episodes from the point of view of those who were on the losing side, from the sixth to the late twentieth centuries. Starting with the plague and war of 541-2 which accelerated the collapse of the Roman Empire, to the recent Rwandan genocide in which the death toll over just a few months probably exceeded a million, history has had an uncomfortable habit of repeating itself.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595457</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roger Moorhouse
|title=Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler's Capital, 1939-45
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Berlin at War is an account of the day to day lives of the ordinary people of Berlin, the then capital of Nazi Germany, during the Second World War. Berlin was heavily bombed throughout much of the war, and suffered greatly as the symbolic target of Allied forces at the end.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551896</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jacqueline Percival
|title=Elbow Grease: How our Grandmothers and Great-Grandmothers Kept House
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=Sometimes I look at the housework that needs to be done and it seems like a mountain that has to be climbed. It's not until I look back at the work that my mother, her mother and even my great grandmother had to do to keep the house clean and free of pests as well as doing all the laundry that I realise that my problems are more of a molehill and a lot less strenuous than their daily grind ever was. Jacqueline Percival has taken a look back at the way that things really were for the women who went before us – and in those days housework generally was down to the woman in the house.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956559530</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laura Schwartz
|title=A Serious Endeavour: Gender, Education and Community at St Hugh's, 1886-2011
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=
'A Serious Endeavour' is an account of the role of one Oxford college in the history of higher education for women. When it was first founded in 1886 there were very different views on what such education should be, even among its supporters. The university would not even grant female students degrees until 1920, and students were allowed to choose their own course of study and whether they would take formal exams or not before this.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668515X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Cooke
|title=The Damnation of John Donellan: A Mysterious Case of Death and Scandal in Georgian England
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Truth is stranger than fiction - but it is not always this gripping. The Boughtons of Lawford Hall, Warwickshire, have a colourful history, including the ghost of One-Handed Boughton, who haunted their land long before this new misfortune befell them. With marriages creating more branches of family, delicate relationships abound and help to shape the complex events detailed in the book. We begin with Sir Theodosius Boughton, heir to the estate when he comes of age, suffering from venereal disease. He is obliged to take medication and is well known for neglecting the recommendations of physicians. One fateful morning, he takes a new medicine, and dies in agony.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668482X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stacy Schiff
|title=Cleopatra: A Life
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Stacey Schiff's biography starts more of less from Cleopatra's infamous meeting with Caesar, where she sneaks into his rooms in a sack. This is one of the most popular images of Cleopatra in the public consciousness and Schiff happily refutes the image of her emerging as a well polished seductress, pointing out that anyone who had been carried in a sack for a considerable period of time will more likely be fairly dishevelled. Schiff takes us through from this moment up to Cleopatra's much dramatised death, and beyond, to the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075353956X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Shirin Ebadi
|title=The Golden Cage: Three Brothers, Three Choices, One Destiny
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Dr Ebadi is currently living in exile, fearing for her safety, should she return to Iran in the foreseeable future. Her Prologue describes a violent and bloody reaction to what was a peaceful situation involving wives, mothers and sisters. Boulders and large stones were thrown at elderly, defenseless women without a moment's hesitation. A taste of things to come?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0979845645</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Frances Wilson
|title=How to Survive the Titanic or the Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=As I read 'How to Survive the Titanic' I was conscious that we're only a matter of months away from the centenary of the sinking – and a slew of media to mark the occasion. Given that the subject has been mined extensively over the years it will be interesting to see whether there's anything new to be said about the tragedy. It's a subject which has always fascinated me – and it was with a sense of anticipation that I opened the book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809222</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Frank McLynn
|title=The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph 1942-45
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=I'm no military historian; I'm not really interested in war. In the Second World War, if push came to shove, I would probably have claimed pacificism. But when this paperback version of the recently published hardback came up, by prolific and highly-esteemed historian Frank McLynn, I just had to read it. The subject is very special in our family, because “Grandad was there”. Grandad fought over the tennis court at Kohima, and he has carried the trauma in his head to this day. Frank McLynn describes that particular battle as “... a scene from Hieronymus Bosch out of Passchendaele”. I knew I had to steel myself to read this book, and was very pleased that the author wrote sensitively about the reality of close combat for lily livers like mine.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551780</amazonuk>
}}
