The Catholic Church and the Campaign for Catholic Emancipation in Ireland and England by Ambrose Macaulay (Four Courts Press, 2016) 416pp., £ 26.74, hard, ISBN 978-1-84682-600-9 Rather like the debate on the European Union…in many respects it was the Brexit of its day…the campaign for Catholic Emancipation divided society into...

The Comet Sweeper. Caroline Herschel’s Astronomical Ambition, Claire Brock, Icon Books, 2017, paperback, 292 pp., £8.99, ISBN 9781785781667 Caroline Herschel - sister of the royal astronomer William Herschel - qualifies to be regarded as no less a figure than ‘Britain’s first female professional scientist’, maintains Claire Brock in this lively account of...

The Common Story: A history of Tooting Common, [ed] Katy Layton-Jones, Wandsworth Council’s Tooting Common Heritage Project, 2019, 132p, £10-00 from the Tooting History Group [or downloadable free via link on the Tooting History Group page]. A few miles from the Historical Association office, a substantial and easily accessible open...

The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land, Thomas Asbridge, (Pocket Books, London, Sydney, New York, Toronto, first published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd., 2010) xvi, 767pp., paperback, £9.99, ISBN 978 1 41652 608 7This edition is by Pocket Books but this substantial volume will scarcely fit into anyone's...

The Devil’s Bridge: The German Victory at Arnhem, 1944, Anthony Tucker-Jones, Osprey Publishing, 2020, 304p, £20-00. ISBN 978-1-4728-3986-2 The British view the events surrounding the bridge across the River Rhine at Arnhem in 1944 as an heroic attempt to accelerate the defeat of Nazi Germany, a view exaggerated in popular...

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...

The Disappearance of Emile Zola: Love, Literature and the Dreyfus Case, Michael Rosen, 2017, Faber and Faber, 302p, £16-99. ISBN 978-0-571-31201-6 Emile Zola occupies a pivotal position in the world of personal integrity and courage. His intervention over the scandalous treatment of the Jewish French army officer, Captain Dreyfus, who...

The English Civil War: An Atlas and Concise History of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1639-51, Nick Lipscombe, Osprey, 2020, 389p, £50-00.                   ISBN 9781472829726. This is an extraordinarily thorough book. Simultaneously it manages both to provide a clear commentary on military experiences within the Three Kingdoms whilst also providing...

The Ever Open Door: 150 years of the Together Trust, Andrew Simpson, The Together Trust, 2020, 140p, £14-99. ISBN 978-1-5272-5671-2  From its earliest beginnings in Manchester 1870 as a ‘Night Refuge for Homeless Boys’, through being transformed into the ‘Manchester and Salford Boys and Girls Refuges and Homes’ and then...

The Fighting Essex Soldier: Recruitment, war and society in the fourteenth century, [ed] Christopher Thornton, Jennifer Ward and Neil Wiffen, Essex Publications, 2017, 178p, £18-99. ISBN 978-1-909291-88-1. Ten years ago The Historian (97, Winter 2007, pp6-13) published an article entitled ‘What did you do in the Hundred Years War, Daddy?, with...

The Financial Affairs of David Lloyd George, Ian Ivatt, Welsh Academic Press, 2019, 160p, £19-99. ISBN 978-1-86057-1251. After 50 years of awareness of politically unsympathetic commentators making insinuations regarding David Lloyd George’s financial dealings, with particular reference to the ‘Lloyd George Political Fund’, Ian Ivatt has done a valuable service in...

The First Blitz: Bombing London in the First World War, Ian Castle, Osprey Publishing, 2015, 208p, £14-99. ISBN 978-1-4728-1529-3 Whilst it is generally a matter of common understanding the ‘Blitz’ was a Second World War phenomenon, Ian Castle argues very strongly and cogently that London had experienced a sustained ‘blitz’...

The Florentines: From Dante to Galileo, Paul Strathern, Atlantic Books, 2021, 372p, £20-00. ISBN 9781786498724. Very occasionally we are offered an entirely new perspective on a body of detail with which we already seem entirely familiar but which has the effect of transforming our understanding. Paul Strathern’s The Florentines: From...

The Franciscans in the Middle Ages, Michael Robson (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge and New York first published 2006, reprinted in paperback 2009) xiv, 239 pp., paperback £16.99, ISBN 978 1 8436 35158This book, by the Director of Studies in Theology at St Edmund's College, Cambridge, surveys the history of the...

The Frozen Chosen: the 1st Marine Division and the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, Osprey Publishing, 2016, £20, 296 pages, ISBN 978-1-4728-1436-4 The title of this excellent book doesn’t do it justice.  As well as chronicling the battles of the US 1st Marine Division in Korea in...

The Geraldines and Medieval Ireland: The Making of a Myth, Peter Crooks & Sean Duffy (editors); Four Courts Press, 2016, 408pp., €50 hard, ISBN978-1-84882-571-2. From the earliest moments of their involvement in Ireland, the Geraldines (or FitzGeralds) - the greatest of the Anglo-Norman dynasties established in Ireland after 1169 - became shrouded in...

The Grand Old Duke of York. A Life of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, 1763-1827, Derek Winterbottom, Pen and Sword Books, Barnsley, 2016, hardback, £19.99, ISBN 9781473845770 This rehabilitation of the military career of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, with which we were all acquainted from...

The Grand Tour, Mike Rendell, Shire Publications, 2022, 64p, £8-99. ISBN 978-1-78402-695-4.  ‘The Grand Tour’ became a major rite of passage for many young aristocrats and was at its peak in the mid-18th century, when Europe experienced a rare three decades of relative peace. It was inspired by Catholic priest and...

The Great Famine, (ed) John Gibney, Pen and Sword History, 2018, 136p, £12-99. ISBN 9781526736635. This selection of essays, edited by John Gibney, is the first instalment of a collaboration between Pen and Sword History and the History Ireland magazine. Its focus is the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s...

The Great Passion, James Runcie, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022, 260p, £16.99. ISBN 978-1-4088-8551-2. One of my academic mentors, Professor Alan Everitt, believed that novels set in carefully researched setting could be a very reliable contemporary source for historians. My experience confirms his judgement: Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat...