Olympic Visions; Images of the Games through History, Mike O'Mahony (Reaktion Books, London, 2012) 176pp., hardback, £22.00, 116 illustrations of which 50 are colour, ISBN 978 1 06189 910 1 The modern Olympic Games have become a world phenomenon since their beginning in 1896 and it has been a signal...

Free Parks for the People: A History of Birmingham's Municipal Parks 1844-1974, Carl Chinn, Brewin Books, 2012, 160p, paperback. ISBN 978-1-85858-495-9. £14-95.Even people who have strong affinity with Birmingham will find what Carl Chinn reveals in his ‘Free Parks for the People' to be an extraordinary story. That Birmingham is...

Britain's Secret War 1939-45, Michael Smith., Andre Deutsch, 2011, 64 pp plus removable documents of historical importance, ISBN 978-0-233-00337-5, £30. Michael Smith is one of the country's foremost writers on defence and intelligence and he has used his considerable experience to produce this gazetteer to British Intelligence in the Second...

Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires. The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians, Richard Sugg, Routledge, 2011, paperback, £24.99 ISBN 9780415674171. Notwithstanding its box-office blockbuster-style title, this serious, chronologically wide-ranging study by a lecturer in Renaissance Literature at the University of Durham identifies evidence of cannibalistic practices in...

The Slave Trade, James Walvin, Thames and Hudson History Files, 2011, paperback, 144 pp, £12.95, ISBN 9780500289174 This is a remarkably compact, beautifully illustrated book and pack on the transatlantic slave trade with the added attraction of ten facsimile documents ranging from a list of goods on a 1688 Dutch...

Women in the Second World War, Neil R. Storey and Molly Housego, Shire Publications, 2011, paperback, £6.99 ISBN 9780747808121 This is another slim, attractively produced, modestly priced, informative and well-illustrated addition to the Shire Library focusing upon the role of women in the Second World War, which by 1943 included...

Napoleon, Georges Lefebvre, Routledge, 2011, paperback, 595 pp., ISBN 9780415610094 Napoleon Bonaparte continues to fascinate as a succession of bicentennial anniversaries recall his military exploits. This classic biographical study by one of France's pre-eminent twentieth century historians has now been published for the first time as a single volume in...

The Green Road into the Trees: An Exploration of England, Hugh Thomson, 2012, Preface, hardback, 310p, ISBN 978-1-84809-332-4, £18-99. This is not a conventional work of local history but it has local history affiliations and dimensions. It is very idiosyncratic in approach but it is nonetheless very engaging. Hugh Thomson,...

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 New Atlas of World History: Global Events at a Glance by John Haywood (Thames & Hudson), 2011252pp., £32 hard, ISBN 978-0-500-25185-0This historical atlas presents global history in a series of uniform world maps.  This allows complete and instant comparability between different periods and regions. For example, when did modern...

Art & Archaeology of the Greek World: A New History, c.2500-c.150 BCE Richard T. Neer (Thames & Hudson), 2012, 400pp., £35 hard, ISBN 978-0-500-05166-5 This richly illustrated, authoritative and accessible book presents a fresh way of looking at ancient Greek art and archaeology, combining a clear chronological narrative with a...

Early Medieval Europe 300-1050: The Birth of Western Society David Rollason (Pearson), 2012 394pp., £22.99, paper, ISBN 978-1-4082-5121-8As a medievalist by training, I have always thought it unfortunate that medieval history does not figure above Key Stage 3 in the National Curriculum and has long since ceased to be a...

Viking Warfare I.P. Stephenson (Amberley Publishing), 2012 144pp., £16.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-84868-690-8 The Viking Age began and in many respects ended in England. Its first act in 789 AD was a murder on a beach in Dorset; its last, some two and a half centuries later, was the crowning of...

Republicanism during the Early Roman Empire, Sam Wilkinson, (Continuum, London and New York, 2012) vi, 263pp., £19.99, ISBN 978 1 4411 2052 6 In a book which is bound to arouse some controversy, Sam Wilkinson, author of Caligula, currently teaching in Foley's School, Cyprus, argues that Republicanism persisted in Rome...

The Myth of Ancient Egypt, Charlotte Booth (Amberley Publishing, Stroud, 2011) 223pp., paperback, £18.99, $30.00, ISBN 978 1 4456 0274 5 This book might equally have been entitled The Myths of Ancient Egypt.  Charlotte Booth, a graduate of University College, London, who is a free-lance Egyptologist, has here investigated eight...

London Underground: Architecture, Design and History, David Long with photographs by Jane Magarigal (The History Press, Stroud, 2011) 144pp., hardback, £18.99, ISBN 978 0 7524 5812 0London Underground has been the exemplar the world over for the construction and management of tubes.  David Long has added this volume to his...

Women in Ancient Egypt, Barbara Watterson (Amberley Publishing, Stroud, 2011) 157pp., paperback, £18.99, ISBN 978 1 4456 0494 7 The 35 beautiful colour illustrations in this book indicate the exceptionally wide-ranging of the author's research.  They are not only from Luxor and elsewhere in Egypt but from Italy, Australia, Russia,...

Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII, Robert Hutchinson (Phoenix, London, 2012, first published in hardback (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2011) xii, 356 pp., paperback, £9.99, ISBN 978 0 7538 2771 0 Robert Hutchinson, OBE, has a doctorate in archaeology and is an associate tutor in church history at the University...

The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction, Peter Marshall (Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 2009) 153pp., paperback, £7.99, $11.95, ISBN 978 0 19923 131 7 Very short introductions have been produced as a way into a new subject written by experts.  Here Peter Marshall, Professor of History at the...

Tolkien in East Yorkshire 1917 - 1918: An Illustrated Tour,Phil Mathison, Dead Good Publications, 2012, £8.99.ISBN: 978-0-9562994-1-3Most people are familiar with the works of J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973). His writings, most notably "The Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings", have sold in millions of copies round the world and...