Storied Ground. Landscape and the Shaping of English National Identity, Paul Readman, Cambridge University Press, hardback, 2018, ISBN 9781108424738 This wide-ranging and stimulating book ‘uncovers why landscape matters so much to the English people, exploring its particular importance in shaping English national identity amid the transformations of modernity’. The obvious...

Strong Women. Life, Text and Territory 1347-1645, Oxford University Press, 2012, paperback, £18, ISBN 9780199661343Originating in a series of Clarendon lectures given at Oxford in October 2007 and first published in hardback in 2011, this welcome paperback edition will enable more widespread access to this remarkable book. Its hardback edition...

Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions - H. Munro Chadwick (Cambridge Literary Collection, Cambridge University Press), 2010 422pp., £21.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-108-01005-4 Why bother to review a book that was originally published in 1905 and some of whose conclusions have been questioned by later historians?  The answer is simple: it's a very...

Suffragettes. How Britain's women fought and died for the right to vote, Amberley, 2014, paperback, 192 pp.,£9.99 ISBN 1445633909 This readable, engaging, pocket-sized, introductory overview of the women's suffrage movement is extensively illustrated with images drawn from publisher's archive and author's collection, some of the most distinctive from record offices...

Facing History and Ourselves is excited to announce a new study guide. Teaching Red Scarf Girl has been developed to help classrooms explore essential Facing History themes, including conformity, obedience, prejudice and justice. Red Scarf Girl, Ji-li Jiang's engaging memoir, provides an insightful window into the first tumultuous years of...

Ten Cities that Led the World: From Ancient Metropolis to Modern Megacity, Paul Strathern, Hodder and Stoughton, 2022, 260p, £25-00. ISBN 978-1-529-35934-2. This book has such a level of coherence and insight that it will be read in a single session. Any book that manages to encompass the notion of...

Thames Mudlarking: Searching for London’s Lost Treasures, Jason Sandy and Nick Stevens, Shire, 2021, 96pp, £9-99. ISBN 9781784424329.  For two hours every day low tide exposes what this book calls ‘the ‘longest archaeological site in Britain’. Erosion and riverboat activity regularly reveal new artefacts. Henry Mayhew, in London Labour and...

The 1916 Irish Rebellion by Briona Nic Dhiarmada (Cork University Press), 2016 205pp., £19.99 hard, ISBN 978-1-78205-191-6 In the centenary of the Easter Rising, it is hardly surprising that there has been an upsurge of publications and re-publications on this seminal event in Irish history.  Like the rebellions in 1798,...

The Anatomy of a Traitor: The History of Espionage and Betrayal, Michael Smith, Aurum Press, 2017, 320p, £20.00. ISBN 978-1-78131-657-3. Although the sub-title of this book hints at a rather wider perspective, in essence this work is focused on very recent history, to the degree that this reviewer recognised most...

The Art of the Picts: Sculpture and Metalwork in Early Medieval Scotland, George and Isabel Henderson, (Thames & Hudson, London 2011) 256pp., paperback, £28.00 ISBN 978 0 500 289 63 1 (first published in hardback, 2004)George Henderson, Emeritus Professor of Medieval Art at the University of Cambridge, and Isobel Henderson,...

The Atlantic World by D'Maris Coffman, Adrian Leonard and William O'Reilly (editors) (Routledge), 2014 704pp., £150 hard, ISBN978-0-415-46704-9 As the meeting point between Europe, colonial America, and Africa, the history of the Atlantic world is a constantly shifting arena, but one which has been a focus of huge and vibrant...

The Atlantic in World History, Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Oxford University Press, paperback, 2012, ISBN 9780195338096This welcome addition to the innovative New Oxford World History series provides an authoritative up-to-date introduction for a wide spectrum of readers to this seminal period in world history focusing specifically upon the role of the...

The Beauty of Her Age: A Tale of Sex, Scandal and Money in Victorian England by Jenifer Roberts (Amberley Publishing), 2016 276pp., £20 hard, ISBN 978-1-4456-5320-4 If you enjoy a good yarn full of sex, scandal and money then this is the book for you. It’s a rags to riches...

The Boleyns: The Rise & Fall of a Tudor Family, David Loades (Amberley Publishing, Stroud, 2011) 304pp., hardback, £20.00, ISBN 978 1 4456 0304 9David Loades in 16 books has gained an enviable renown as the story teller of famous Tudors, especially Henry VIII.  The fall of Anne Boleyn and...

The Book of the Poppy, Chris McNab, The History Press, Stroud, paperback, ISBN 9780750982481 As Remembrance Day is commemorated in 2018 one hundred years on from the ending of hostilities, this concise and evocative compact volume, first published in hardback in 2014 and now reissued in paperback, provides an illuminating...

The Borough of Maldon 1688-1800: a Golden Age, J. R. Smith, Brewin Books, 2013, 532p [97 illustrations, 5 maps and 18 tables], £35-00. ISBN 978-1-85858-513-0.This is a work of meticulous scholarship, as one might expect from someone who studied under the painstaking scholarship of Professors Alan Everitt and Charles Phythian-Adams...

The Bride’s Trunk: A story of War and Reconciliation, Ingrid Dixon, Cloudshill Press, 2016, 219p, £7-99 [or £4-97 Kindle]. ISBN 978-9935080-2-8 A cornerstone of historical research is the identification of primary sources. Instinctively, most of the time, we think in terms of documentary sources, stretching back into past centuries. Every...

The British Census, Simon Smith, Shire Publications, 2021, 64p, £8-99. ISBN 978-1-78442-457-2 This is timely and informative. Simon Smith has very carefully placed the British Census in the wider perspective of historical processes of collecting data about people’s lives over the centuries. The narrative is clear and well-organized, and there...

The Building of England: How the History of England Has Shaped Our Buildings, Simon Thurley, William Collins, 2013, 544 pp.  £35.00, ISBN, 978 00 7301 140 9.An adroit book that handsomely links assured scholarship to an effective and accessible accountof the development of English architecture. Both a wonderful present and...

Michael A. Flower, (editor) (Cambridge University Press), 2017, 520 pp, £ 26.99, paper, ISBN 978-1-107-65215-6. Herodotus and Thucydides, though not household names, are probably known by most teachers of history, even if they are unlikely to have read or analysed their ‘Histories’. The same cannot be said of the philosopher...