Poor Relief and Community in Hadleigh, Suffolk 1547-1600: volume 12 Studies in Regional and Local History, Marjorie Keniston McIntosh, University of Hertfordshire Press, 2013, hardback, 188p, 31 tables, 4 figures, ISBN 978-1-907396-91-5, £35.00.  [paperback version to follow later in the year] ‘The poor always ye have with you,' we are...

Posters of the First World War, David Bownes and Robert Fleming, Shire Publications, 2014, 172p, £10-00. ISBN 978-0-74781-428-3.   With over seventy colour reproductions of Great War poster, David Bownes and Robert Fleming provide us substantial evidence of how the war effort was supported by a propaganda campaign waged with...

Property and Virginity; The Christianization of Marriage in Medieval Iceland 1200-1600, Agnes S. Arnorsdottir (Aarhus University Press, Denmark, 2010) 533pp., hardback, £50.00, ISBN 978 8 7934 513 3This is a groundbreaking special study.  Christianity changed the culture of society in Iceland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as it did...

Queen Victoria and the European Empires, John Van Der Kiste, Fonthill, 2016, hardback, £18.99, ISBN 9781781555507 John Van Der Kiste has published over forty books, a high proportion of which relate to individual and collective royal biography, in which he has developed considerable expertise, which is evident in his latest...

Race to the South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen, Roland Huntford (Continuum, London and New York, 2110) xxii, 330pp., hardback, £20, ISBN 978 1 4411 698272.This must be the modern history bargain of the year.  A century ago in 1910, two ships left for Antarctica, the Terra...

Reinventing History: The Enlightenment Origins of Ancient History, edited by James Moore, Ian Macgregor Morris and Andrew J. Bayliss (Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, 2008) hardback, xi, 312pp., £18.00, ISBN 978 1 905165 37 7This book is a collection of essays by nine scholars...

Ourselves Alone?  Religion, society and politics in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Ireland.  Essays presented to S.J. Connolly. W. Hayton and Andrew R. Holmes (editors) (Four Courts Press), 2016 240pp., £50 hard, ISBN 978-1-84682-592-7 This volume was conceived as a tribute to Sean Connolly, who is scheduled to retire next year as...

Renaissance People: Lives that shaped the Modern Age, Robert C Davis and Beth Lindsmith (Thames and Hudson, London, 2011) 336pp., hardback, £24.95 ISBN 978 0 500 251775 Robert C. Davis is Professor of Renaissance history at Ohio State University and Beth Lindsmith a colleague.  This book offers a survey 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...

Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire 1600-1980, Richard Brown, Clio Publishing, 2013, paperback, 626 pp., £27.95 ISBN 9780955698385 Susan England of Clio, in an unusual, but entirely appropriate, appreciation of the author by the publisher in a foreword to this final volume of Richard Brown's remarkable trilogy of studies...

What’s the point of history? In a time when the value of studying the humanities is often questioned this book provides a genuine attempt to analyse how history impacts on people’s lives. The book explains how the past connects with its public, discussing the role which interpretations play in contributing to social and...

David Baldwin - (Amberley Press), 2013272 pp., £9.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-4456-1591-2Interest in Richard III has recently peaked with the discovery of his skeleton in a Leicester car park, something David Baldwin had predicted twenty-seven years ago and he includes a chapter on the discovery in this well-written book.   For someone...

Richard III and the Bosworth Campaign - Peter Hammond (Pen & Sword Books Ltd.), 2010 192pp., £19.99, hard, ISBN 978-1-8441-5259-6There remains intense popular interest in Richard III.  In one sense, this is surprising since he was king for only two years and was the last English king to die in...

Roman Britain. A New History 55 BC-AD 450, Patricia Southern, Amberley, 2013, paperback, 464 pp., £12.99, ISBN 9781445611907 Boldly billed as ‘the most authoritative history of Roman Britain ever published for the general reader', this readable and engaging analytical narrative by an author with an extensive track record of twelve...

Rome: City in Terror – The Nazi Occupation 1943-44, Victor Failmezger; Osprey Publishing, 2020, 496 pp, £25.00ISBN 978-1-4728-4128-5  Victor Failmezger has written a thorough and detailed narrative of the appalling conditions that existed in Rome in the period from the first Allied bombing of Rome in July 1943 to its liberation on...

Rorke’s Drift: A New Perspective, Neil Thornton, Fonthill Media Limited, 2016, 192pp., £20 hard, ISBN 978-1-78155-553-8. The battle of Rorke’s Drift on 22-23 January 1879 is established in history as one of Britain’s most incredible actions, where approximately 155 defenders held off a Zulu force of over 4,000 warriors in a savage,...

Royal Babies. A History 1066-2013, Amy Licence, Amberley, 2013, hardback, £16.99, 208 pp., ISBN 9781445617626Retrospectives of the year 2013 have viewed the birth of HRH Prince George of Cambridge not only as signifying renewal of the monarchy with the prospect of continuity of the descendants of the house of Windsor...

S.E.19: My London Life, 1937-63, Roger Ward, Over Bite Press, 2022, 222p, £10-00. ISBN 978-1-9­­15292-39-1. This is a deeply personal book, written by Professor Roger Ward to describe and explain his early life in Upper Norwood for his children. It is reminiscent of Roy Hattersley’s A Yorkshire Boyhood [1983] and...

Saladin: Hero of Islam by Geoffrey Hindley(Pen & Sword), 2010 208pp., £12.99 paper, ISBN 1-84884203-1Originally published in 1976 and republished thirty years later with additions to the bibliography to bring it up-to-date, this is a highly serviceable study of Saladin, the most effective of the Islamic leaders to oppose the...

Cressy, David - (Oxford University Press), 2013237 pp., £16.99 hard, ISBN 978-0-19-969575-1Today, government is concerned by the question of fuel security (or rather insecurity) as access to gas resources moves away from the dwindling North Sea deposits to supplies brought in from across Europe.  This helps to explain why the...