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...

The Origins of the English Parliament 924-1327, J. R. Maddicott (Oxford University Press, 2010) xv, 526pp., hardback, £30, ISBN 978 0 19 958550 2J. R. Maddicott, a Fellow of the British Academy and former joint editior of the English Historical Review, was Fellow and Tutor of Exeter College, Oxford, from...

The Ottoman Culture of Defeat: The Balkan Wars and their Aftermath by Eyal Ginio (Hurst and Company London), 2016 376pp., £50 hard, ISBN 978-1-84904-541-4 When the first Balkan War broke out in October 1912, few Ottomans anticipated that it would prove to be a climactic turning point for the Empire...

The Palestinians and British Perfidy: The Tragic Aftermath of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, C.W.R. Long, Sussex Academic Press, 2018, 307p, £75-00. ISBN 1845198961978. One of the hazards of modern-day British politics, an experience shared by politicians in both of our main political parties, is to express a view or...

The Parish Atlas of England: All Early Ordnance Survey 6-inch Maps Traced Over, (ed) T.C.H. Cockin, Malthouse Press, 2017, 898p, £60.00*, ISBN 978-1-907364-10-5. *The Parish Atlas of England is available to Historical Association members at the special price of £45.00 direct from the publishers: The Malthouse Press, Grange Cottage, Malthouse Lane,...

The Pen y Gwryd Hotel: Tales from the Smoke Room, [ed] Rob Goodfellow, Jonathan Copeland and Peter O’Neill,  Gomer Press,  2016,  260p,  £14-99.  ISBN 9781785621499. This is self-evidently not a conventional historical work. The book comprises over sixty different personal reminiscences and comments about a remote hotel in Snowdonia.  However...

The People's War: reliving Life on the Home Front in World War II, by Felicity Goodall Reader's Digest, £25, hardback, pub Oct 2008, ISBN: 9780276443916.Reviewed by Alf WilkinsonThis large hard-back book is very much a library and/or reference book. Its main attraction is the collection of photographs and posters, many...

Tragic Encounters: The People’s History of Native Americans by Page Smith (Amberley Publishing), 2015 477pp., £25, hard, ISBN 978-1-4456-5402-7 Page Smith was one of America’s greatest historians. He made his mark with a history of the United States published in eight volumes, each volume carrying the subtitle ‘A People’s History...

The Pioneering Life of Mary Wortley Montagu: Scientist and Feminist, Jo Willett, Pen and Sword, 2021, 256p, £25-00. ISBN 9781526779380 Mary Wortley Montagu was baptised on 26 May 1689 and died on 21 August 1762 in London. From a wealthy aristocratic family, she had great intellectual curiosity and the opportunities...

The Pirate World: A History of the Most Notorious Sea Robbers, Angus Konstam, Osprey Publishing, 2019, 336p, £25-00. ISBN 976-1-4728-3097-5 Angus Konstam very successfully blends a narrative of how piracy has been a challenge to settled society for at least two thousand years with some very important insights. He explains...

The Poisoned Well: Empire and its Legacy in the Middle East, Roger Hardy, Hurst and Company, London, paperback, 2018, ISBN 9781849049542. Roger Hardy worked for more than twenty years as a Middle East analyst with the BBC World service. In this book he ‘unearths an imperial history stretching from North Africa...

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...

Vincent Morley (Cork University Press), 2017, 362pp., €39 hard, ISBN 978-1-78205-208-1. This book is a study of the Irish popular mind between the late-seventeenth and the early-nineteenth century. It examines the collective assumptions, aspirations, fears, resentments and prejudices of the common people as they are revealed in their vernacular literature....

The Priest and the Playwright! Parallel Lives in Edwardian London, M. F. Brown, (Pen Press, Brighton, 2009) v, 181pp., paperback, £7.99, ISBN 978 1 906710 63 7This is a record of two very different characters - the American socialite and author, Pearl Craigie, and this author's great-uncle, a Scottish priest,...

The Private Life of Edward IV, John Ashdown-Hill, Amberley Publishing, 2016, 336pp., £20 hard, ISBN 978-1-4456-5245-0. Dr John Ashdown-Hill, a central figure in the Looking for Richard Project and a renowned Richard III historian with a special talent for getting behind the mythology of history, now turns his attention to Richard’s...

Francis Aran Murphy and Philip G. Ziegler, (eds.)The Providence of God (T. & T. Clark, London and New York), 2009xi., 338pp., paperback,  ISBN 978 0 567 03341 3, £24.99. hardback, ISBN 978 0 567 03340 6Providence is and has always been both an influential and a controversial concept in Christian...

The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain, Tristram Hunt, Allen Lane, 2021, 323pp., £25. ISBN 978-0-24128-789-7.  As MP for Stoke-on-Trent, Tristram Hunt was prominent in the 2014 fight to save the Wedgwood Museum at Barlaston and prevent its contents going to auction. As director of the Victoria...

The Reckoning – The Defeat of Army Group South, 1944, Prit Buttar, Osprey Publishing, 2020, £30, 496 pages, ISBN HB 978-1-4728-3791-2 This is the ninth of Prit Buttar’s non-fiction books about conflict on Germany’s Eastern Front in the First and Second World wars, several of which Trevor James and I...

The Reformation in 100 Facts, Dr Kathleen Chater, Amberley, 2016, paperback, £7.99, 192 pp, ISBN 9781445651347 The year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s dramatic nailing of his 95 theses on indulgences denying the pope’s right to forgive sins on the church door at Wittenberg, which in itself...

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...