Robert Gottlieb, Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt, Yale University Press, 2010, hardback, 233 pp, £18.99, ISBN 9780300141276Robert Gottlieb's thoroughly researched and elegantly written biography of the energetic, idiosyncratic, iconic actress and international celebrity, who slept in a coffin, travelled with lion cubs and wore a hat festooned with a...

Keith Lowe, Penguin Viking, 2012, 460p, ISBN 978-670-91746-4, £25-00.This is an extraordinarily well-researched example of a recent approach to historical investigation. Keith Lowe has examined the local evidence, using the reports, letters and recollections of people at that local level, to provide an exceptional insight into what happened to people...

Scotland: A Concise History, Fitzroy Maclean and Magnus Linklater (Thames & Hudson, 2012, first published 1970, 4th edition) 260pp., paperback, £9.95, ISBN 978 0 500 28987 7 For this 4th edition of Fitzroy Maclean's definitive history of Scotland from early times to the 1990s, the assessments of Scotland's place in...

Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages by Dirk Meier(Boydell Press), 2009 184pp. £14.99 paper, ISBN 978-1843-383512-7The first thing that stands out in this book is the wonderful colour illustrations and maps.  The second is the discussion of the nature and construction of ships such as the cog, carrack...

Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain 1830-1918 by Richard Brown (Createspace), 2012  482pp., $25, paper, ISBN 978-1466449084 Besides research on primary sources, academics and scholars also have to reflect on available secondary sources, so as to publish syntheses meant at the general public. Richard Brown embarked on such an...

Northamptonshire Black History Association Pub 2008; ISBN:978 0 9557139 1 0; £12.95 [+£2.30 p and p] from: NBHA, Doddridge Centre, 109 St James Road, Northampton, NN5 5LD. How fortunate Northamptonshire history teachers are! With the current emphasis on community cohesion and diversity in the New Secondary Curriculum, they are presented...

She-wolves, Helen Castor, Faber and Faber, 2010, 474p, ISBN 978-0-571-23705-0, £20-00.The central focus of Helen Castor's She-wolves is the fact that, when Edward VI died in 1553, every one of his potential successors within the Tudor line was a woman. Unlike in France, there was no clear bar to a...

Ships and Shipbuilders. Pioneers of Design and Construction by Fred M. Walker. Seaforth Publishing, 2010, hardback, 256pp, £25.00, ISBN 9781848320727 This useful reference book offers biographical assessments of the contribution to shipbuilding of more than 130 notable engineers, scientists, philosophers, businessmen, shipwrights, naval architects and inventors who influenced ship design...

The Spies of Winter: The CGHQ Codebreakers who fought the Cold War Sinclair McKay, Aurum Press, 2016, 330 pp., £9.99, ISBN 978 178131 298 8. A superbly accessible account of the intelligence war after 1945. Very good on the nature of the life, on relations with the United States, and...

Silent Killers: Submarines and Underwater WarfareJames Delgado, Osprey Publishing, June 2011.ISBN: 978-1849083652.James P. Delgado is an expert in underwater archaeology as well as marine history. In a detailed and well-illustrated book, Delgado traces the history of submarines from their humble beginnings to the position now, where they are a most...

Sir Richard Tangye 1833-1906: A Cornish Entrepreneur in Victorian Birmingham, Stephen Roberts, Birmingham Biographies, 2015, 65p, £4-99. ISBN 9781512207910. For those interested in the industrial and commercial history of Birmingham, Eric Hopkins’ Birmingham: the First Manufacturing Town in the World 1760-1840 [1989] has been our essential starting point. In contrast...

Sir Robert Peel: The Life and Legacy by Richard A. Gaunt(I.B. Tauris), 2010 264pp., £20 hard. ISBN 978-184885354The two-volume biography of Peel by Norman Gash was published in 1961 and 1967.  Gash sees Peel as a pragmatic administrator and an instinctively consensual politician whose great achievement was to establish the...

Sixties Ireland: Reshaping the Economy, State and Society, 1957-1973 by Mary E. Daly (Cambridge University Press), 2016 426pp., £19.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-316-50931-9 This provocative new history of Ireland during the long 1960s exposes the myths of Ireland’s modernisation. Mary Daly questions traditional interpretations which see these years as a time...

Slavery and the British Country House, Madge Dresser and Andrew Hann, eds, English Heritage, 2013, hardback, ISBN 9781848020641. Since the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle hit the big screens in 2013 this timely, accessible and scholarly multi-authored volume by English Heritage, whose publication coincided with the year of the film's...

Slavery in Yorkshire: Richard Oastler and the campaign against child labour in the Industrial Revolution - John A. Hargreaves and E. A. Hilary Haigh, (eds.) (University of Huddersfield), 2012 238pp., rrp £24 paper , ISBN 978-1-86218-107-6. The book is also available at £20 here... In Kirkheaton churchyard near Huddersfield there...

Snapdragon: The World War II Exploits of Darby’s Ranger and Combat Photographer Phil Stern, Liesl Bradner, Osprey, 2018, 312p, £20-00, ISBN 978-1-4728-2850-7 Phil Stern was a highly successful photographer of fashionable and remarkable figures in the post-war era. His range extended from Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra to the more serious...

Somme: 141 Days, 141 Lives, Alexandra Churchill and Andrew Holmes, The History Press, 2016, hardback, £25.00, 240 pp, ISBN 9780750965323 This deeply reflective, beautifully produced volume has been published to commemorate the centenary of the Battle of the Somme and focuses upon the experiences of 141 fallen casualties who over...

Staffordshire’s War: Voices of the First World War, Karen Hunt, Amberley, 2017, 160p, £14-99. ISBN 978-1-4456-5785-1 In Staffordshire’s War Professor Karen Hunt has reflected the best intentions of the Editors of The Historian when they initiated their ‘Aspects of War’ series of articles, designed to explore the widest possible context...

Stalin’s Englishman: the Lives of Guy Burgess by Andrew Lownie - Hodder and Stoughton, 2015. 432 pp, £9-99. ISBN 978-1-473-62738-3 Andrew Lownie has given us the first proper biography of Guy Burgess, the fruit of twenty years of meticulous research including over 100 interviews.  He has followed the traditional approach,...

Stoke-on-Trent in 50 Buildings, Mervyn Edwards, Amberley, 2018, 96p,       £14-99. ISBN 978-1-4456-7781-1 Mervyn Edwards records that there are fewer than 200 listed buildings in Stoke-on-Trent. The limited number of listed buildings is an immediate indication of the constraints under which he has been making his selection of fifty buildings for...