Tutbury: ‘A Castle Firmly Built' - Archaeological and historical investigations at Tutbury Castle, Staffordshire, Malcolm Hislop, Mark Kincey and Gareth Williams, Birmingham Archaeology Monograph Series 11 [BAR 546], 2011, Archaeopress,  293p,  ISBN 978-1-4073-0855-5, £55-00.This is the long-awaited report on the historical evidence that has emerged at Tutbury Castle and its...

Uncommon Courage: The Yachtsmen Volunteers of World War II, Julia Jones, Adlard Coles, 2022, 310p, £20-00. ISBN 978-1-4729-87105 Historians are frequently obsessed with defining what constitutes a primary source, a source which will be guaranteed to yield reliable data. What Julia Jones has done is to produce a book which...

Understanding the British Empire by Ronald Hyam(Cambridge University Press), 2010 552pp., £24.99 paper, ISBN 0-978-521-13290-9Ronald Hyam is a highly regarded imperial historian whose work over the last thirty years has been at the forefront of innovative thinking about the subject.  Divided into six main themes, the geopolitical and economic dynamics...

Victorian Stained Glass, Trevor Yorke, Shire Publications, 20222, 64p, £8-99. ISBN 978-1-78442-483-1 This is an extraordinarily helpful introduction to the art and manufacture of stained glass. Its extra attraction is that it offers much more than the title suggests. Trevor Yorke provides a very succinct but clear explanation of the...

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...

Voices of the Code Breakers: Personal Accounts of the secret heroes of WW2. Michael Paterson David and Charles, £14.99 ISBN 13 978 0 71532280 2 Published 2007It's not just in the Soviet Union that recently declassified documents are changing the way we view WW2. It also applies to the secret...

Voices of the Flemish Waffen-SS, Jonathan Trigg, Amberley, 2017, 256p, £20-00. ISBN 978-1-4456-6636-5  The subtitle of Jonathan Trigg’s book is ‘The Final Testament of the Oostfronters’ and this very aptly guides us to his purpose in researching this topic. Given the unsettling knowledge that Belgian and Dutch nationals fought within...

Volunteers and Pressed Men. How Britain and its Empire Raised Its Forces in Two World Wars, Roger Broad, Fonthill, 2016, hardback, 206 pp., £20.00, ISBN 9781781553961 This volume focuses specifically upon recruitment for the two World Wars of the twentieth century, which will enable students to readily compare and contrast...

War Bows, Mike Loades, Osprey Publishing, 2019, 312p, £30-00. ISBN 978-1-4728-2553-7. This is a highly technical book. Mike Loades examines in exceptional detail four types of ‘war bow’ – the longbow, the crossbow, the composite bow and the Japanese ‘yumi’, used by the samurai. This is an extraordinarily well-illustrated scholarly...

War in an Age of Revolution 1775-1815 by Roger Chickering and Stig Főrster, (eds.)(Cambridge University Press), 2010 422pp., £45 hard, ISBN 0-978-521-89996-3Modern warfare really began in the series of wars that convulsed Europe and North America between 1775 and 1815: the War of American Independence, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic...

Warfare, Raiding and Defence in Early Medieval Britain, by Erik Grigg, Marlborough: Robert Hale, 2018, 224 pp., £25; ISBN 978 0 7198 26788. A sophisticated analysis of defence in early-medieval Britain that focuses on the widespread building of early-modern dykes in order to thwart the raids that were an incessant...

Wealth and Disaster: Atlantic Migrations from a Pyrenean Town in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, John Hopkins University Press, 2016, 230pp., $45 hard, ISBN 978-1-4214-2128-5. In 1729, Marc-Antoine Lamerenx, a minor French nobleman, set sail for Saint-Domingue. Twenty years later, peasant Jean Mouscardy also made the long and difficult journey to Saint-Domingue. Although...

Welfare in Widecombe 1700-1900: An illustrated journey through local archives, Roger Claxton, Widecombe History Group, 2019, 194p, £17-00 [plus postage and packing], ISBN 978-1-9162849-0-6. More details from www.widecombe-in-the-moor.com/welfare/ Meticulous research has enabled Roger Claxton to produce his Welfare in Widecombe 1700-1900, with its longer and highly significant title of an...

Wellington's Peninsular War Generals and their Battles by T.A. Heathcote, Pen and Sword, 2010, hardback, 208 pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781848840614This new addition to T.A. Heathcote's series of collected naval and military biographies will be welcomed by military historians and by those whose interest in the exploits of those involved in...

HistoriographyChristiane Harzig and Dirk Hoerder with Donna Gabaccia What is Migration History? (What is History? Polity Press), 2009 181pp., £13.99 paper, ISBN 978-0-7456-4336-6Migration has formed one of the enduring characteristics of the human race and there have been particular periods when peoples have migrated for a variety of reasons from...

Wingfield: Suffolk’s Forgotten Castle, Elaine Murphy, Poppyland Publishing, 2021, 396pp., £19.95. ISBN 978-1-909796-88-1.  Grade 1 listed Wingfield Manor, ancestral home of the Wingfield family was inherited by Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, in 1385, less than four weeks after his marriage to Katherine Wingfield, sole heir of her...

Women and the Great Hunger, Christine Kinealy, Jason King and Ciaran Reilly, Cork University Press, 2017, paperback, 236 pp., £21.95, ISBN 97809909454  The seventeen editors and authors contributing to this groundbreaking study include some of the leading researchers in Irish studies, offering new scholarship, methodologies and perspectives on this immense...

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,...

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...

Working-class Lives in Edwardian Harrogate, Paul Jennings, Palatine Books, 2022, 264p, £14.99. ISBN 978-1-910837-37-5. Instinctively most people would identify Harrogate in modern times as a rather well-built and prosperous tourist centre. Of course, it is more than that because the real impetus to its history was its emergence as a...