The Dignity of Chartism: Essays by Dorothy ThompsonStephen Roberts (ed.) (Verso), 2015 xxx, 206pp, £14.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-78188-849-6The historian Dorothy Thompson, who died aged 87 in 2011, was best known for her writing on the social and cultural aspects of the nineteenth-century Chartist movement. The documents she edited in The...

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...

Erasmus Darwin and Evolution, Desmond King-Hele, Stuart Harris [3 Pingle Head, 171 Millhouses Lane, Sheffield S7 2HD], 2014, 212p, £8-00. ISBN 978-0-9542-1518-7 Desmond King-Hele is foremost amongst contemporary scholars who have explored the life, work and ideas of Erasmus Darwin. A substantial portion of this book is a basic introduction...

John Starling and Ivor Lee, No Labour, No Battle: Military Labour During the First World War, The History Press, 2009 (384pp, incl. 30pp of phtogrpahs; pbk, £19.99) You might wonder why I am telling you about this book.  There have been endless commemorations about WWI, but except for David Olusoga's...

Joan of Arc, Helen Castor, Faber and Faber,2014, 328p, £20-00 [ebook £12-99]. ISBN 978-0-571-284627. The full title of this work is Joan of Arc: A History and this guides the reader into an expectation that this is not just another biography of Joan of Arc. With the meticulous scholarship that...

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...

Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History - James M. Banner, Jr (Cambridge University Press, 2012) 267pp., £18.99 paper, ISBN 978-1107697287 Based on the author's more than fifty years as a professional historian in academic and other capacities, Being a Historian is a book that both...

E. H. Gombrich, ‘A Little History of the World', (Revd Ed., London, 2005), pp. 284.  ISBN: 978-0-300-14332-4 (paperback)Ernest Gombrich is best remembered as one of the most influential art historians and critics of the twentieth century. What is less well known is that at the age of twenty five (whilst...

The Victorian and Edwardian Schoolchild, Pamela Horn, Amberley, 2010, paperback, 192 pp, £16.99, ISBN 9781848688100; Life Below Stairs in the Twentieth Century, Pamela Horn, Amberley, 2010, paperback, 294 pp, £16.99, ISBN 9781848688124; Women in the 1920s, Pamela Horn, Amberley, 2010, paperback, 256 pp, £16.99, ISBN 9781848688117 Amberley are to be...

History: An introduction to theory, method and practice Peter Claus and John Marriott (Pearson Education), 2012 461pp., £22.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-4058-1254-2It is hardly surprising that the theory of history is a subject that many students try to avoid.  In my student days, you were expected to read Carr, Elton and...

The Human Kind, Alexander Baron, with an introduction by Sean Longden  (Black Spring Press, 2011) xvii, 160pp., paperback, £9.99, ISBN 978 0 948238 47 5This is a work of fiction, written as a series of short stories but it is based on the author's actual experience of war.  It tells...

Identifying the English: A History of Personal Identification, 1500 to the Present by Edward Higgs  (Continuum), 2011  286pp., £25 hard, ISBN 978-1-4411-8203-6 Who we are is increasingly seen as an important issue in British politics and is an integral part of the increasingly pervasive and intrusive ‘information and security state'.  We...

A Concise History of Russia by Paul Bushkovitch (Cambridge Concise Histories, Cambridge University Press), 2012  491pp., £19.99 paper, ISBN 978-0-521-54323-1This book is accessible to students and general readers and provides a broad overview of Russian history since the ninth century. The author emphasises the enormous changes in the understanding of Russian...

The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain: Masculinity, Political Culture and the Struggle for Women's Rights by Ben Griffin (Cambridge University Press), 2012   352pp., £60 hard, ISBN 978-1-107-01507-4 The last twenty years has seen a renaissance in the study of the struggle for women's rights in the nineteenth century but...

Jonathan Dewhurst: the Curtain Falls, Philip and Susan Taylor, Matador, 2011, ISBN 978-1848767-263. £12-00.In 2001 Philip and Susan Taylor published their Jonathan Dewhurst: The Lancashire Tragedian. In this work they introduced the life and work of Philip's distant relative, Jonathan Dewhurst, who had been an actor and manager of the...

The SAS in World War II - An Illustrated History, Gavin Mortimer.  Osprey Publishing, 2011, 256 pp, ISBN 978-1-84908-646-2, £20.With so much sensational literature being produced nowadays about Special Forces, it is good to find a book about the history of the Special Air Service (SAS) during World War 2,...

The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield: History, Science and God by Michael Bentley(Cambridge University Press), 2011 381pp., £50, hard, ISBN 978-1-10700-397-2During the 1950s, the History establishment was dominated by the likes of Lewis Namier, Hugh Trevor-Roper, A.J.P. Taylor and Herbert Butterfield.  Apart from Taylor whose essays and many of...

Edward III by Mark Ormrod (Yale English Monarchs, Yale University Press), 2011 721pp., £30, hard, ISBN 978-0-300-11910-7 With the publication of Edward III, the English Monarchs series now includes biographies of monarchs from Edward the Confessor to Mary Tudor (apart from Henry III and IV) and James II to George...

Aethelstan, The First King of England by Sarah Foot (Yale English Monarchs Series, Yale University Press), 2011 283pp., £30, hard, ISBN 978-0-300-12535-1 Most people remember King Alfred, if only because he is the only English monarch to be accorded the title ‘the Great' but far fewer people will have heard...