Korean Air War: Sabres, MIGs, and Meteors 1950-53, Michael Napier, Osprey Publishing, 2021, 320 pages, £30, ISBN HB 978-1-4728-44446  Korea is known as ‘The Forgotten War’ and air warfare is usually considered a specialist area, which means that Michael Napier has taken on a daunting job in writing a history...

Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings, Tom Shippey, Reaktion Books, hardback, 2018, ISBN 9781780239095 Tom Shippey’s major new study of the Vikings comes highly recommended, tipped by Professor Jesse Byock to become ‘a classic’ since ‘it takes the reader deep into the world and thought...

Lawrence of Arabia on War: The Campaign in the Desert 1916-18, Rob Johnson, Osprey Publishing, 2020, 368p, £25-00. ISBN 978-1-4728-3491-1 For those of us whose detailed knowledge of Lawrence of Arabia may have been drawn from Robert Graves’ classic Lawrence and the Arabs (1927), amplified by occasional textbook references, this really...

David Paterson. 2011, Troubador Publishing, £12.95.Histories of old established schools are often very interesting and this book is certainly no exception. The author taught history at King Edward's, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, for over thirty years and has only recently retired from there. He, therefore, knows his subject very well and he...

Letters of Solidarity and Friendship: Czechoslovakia 1968-71, [ed] David Parker, Bacquier Books, 2017, 436p, £14-99. ISBN 978-5262-0603-9 These Letters of Solidarity and Friendship are, in effect a tribute by Professor David parker to a letter-writing relationship which his late father, Leslie Parker, had with Paul Zalud in Czechoslovakia. Leslie was...

Lincoln in the Atlantic World, Louise L. Stevenson (Cambridge University Press), 2015 277pp., £21.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-107-52423-1 We tend to think of Abraham Lincoln as the almost archetypal American president, an individual who rose from log-cabin to the White House, who defended the Union against the threat posed by the...

Literary Trails: Haworth and the Brontës, Catherine Rayner and David Walford, Pen and sword History, 2018, 276p, £14-99. ISBN 9781526720856 Crossing the moors in West Yorkshire, even in mid-summer, there is a sense of being remote in what clearly at times is a challenging and bleak landscape. It is in...

London Fog, Christine L. Corton, Harvard University Press, 2015, 391p, £22-95, ISBN 978-0-674-08835-1 London Fog is a very thorough piece of research into a phenomenon which was effectively ended by the Clean Air Act of 1962. It is written in a very engaging manner and its scientific exploration is exemplary....

London’s Railway Stations, Oliver Green, Shire Publications, 2022, 64p, £9.99. ISBN 978 1 78442 505 0  Genuinely authentic Londoners will be familiar with all thirteen of its railway terminuses and this book, by a recognised expert on London’s railway provision, provides an excellent introduction to the topic which will now...

John Starling and Ivor Lee, No Labour, No Battle: Military Labour During the First World War, The History Press, 2009 (384pp, incl. 30pp of phtogrpahs; pbk, £19.99) You might wonder why I am telling you about this book.  There have been endless commemorations about WWI, but except for David Olusoga's...

Nannau: A Rich Tapestry of Welsh History, Philip Nanney Williams, Llwyn Estates Publication, 2016, 393p, £30-00. ISBN 978-0-9955337-0-7 This is an extraordinary book. It is a memorial to the long-established Nannau estate and its long-standing family in Merioneth but it has potential for a much wider readership. Its painstaking research...

Norfolk and Suffolk Churches: The Domesday Record, David Butcher, Poppyland Publishing, 2019, 369p, £14-95. ISBN 9781909796614. This is a very specialist book with a seemingly rather local potential audience. However, those who, in the distant past, were much influenced by H. C. Darby’s examination of various aspects of Domesday Geography...

Palmerston: A Biography David Brown (Yale University Press), 2010   576pp., £25 paper, ISBN 978-0-300-11898-8Palmerston was a politician who was rather like a slow-burning fuse: it took a long time for him to reach the explosive heights of political power.  Born in 1784, he was Secretary for War for nearly two...

Paradise in Chains: The Bounty Mutiny and the Founding of Australia, Diane Preston, Bloomsbury, 2018, 333pp., £25 hard, ISBN 978-1-63286-610-3 William Bligh hold the unenviable record of having suffered two mutinies in his career. The story of the mutiny on the Bounty in April 1789 and of William Bligh's and his men's survival...

Passchendaele 1917: The Tommies’ Experience of the Third battle of Ypres, Robert J. Parker, Amberley, 2017, 288p, £20-00. ISBN 978-1-4456-5571-0 This very coherent commentary and analysis of what we know as the ‘Passchendaele’ campaign in 1917 is sub-titled ‘The Tommies’ Experience of the Third battle of Ypres’ but in reality...

Petit’s Tours of Old Staffordshire, Philip Modiano, RPS Publications, 2019, 180p [with 185 images], £14-00. ISBN 978-1-9164931-0-0 Occasionally a remarkable book appears on a most unexpected topic. Philip Modiano’s research into the life and creative output of the Reverend John Louis Petit is just one such work. Modiano presents this...

Plague, Pestilence and Pandemic: Voices from History, [ed] Peter Furtado, Thames and Hudson, 2021, 335p, £20-00. ISBN 978-0-500-25258-1. This book is very timely in its arrival. Peter Furtado, the former Editor of History Today, has provided us with two approaches to the issue of Plague, Pestilence and Pandemic. In the...

Poland and the Second World War 1938-48, Evan McGilvray, Pen and Sword, 2019, 344p, £25-00. ISBN 9781473834101. For those of us who understood that the Polish Partitions of the 18th Century had removed the reality of a Polish state from the map of Europe and that at the end of the...

Politics, Society and Homosexuality in Post-War Britain: the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 and its significanceKeith Dockray Fonthill Media, 2017, 96 pp., £14.99. ISBN 978-1-78155-624-5  This book is a good introduction to the legislation concerning and the Establishment attitudes towards gay or ‘homosexual’ society from the latter half of the...

Pontifex Maximus: A Short History of the Popes, Christopher Lascelles, Crux Publishing, 2017, 375pp., £9.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-909979-45-1 This book is aimed at the general reader who is short on time and seeks an accessible overview unencumbered by ecclesiastical jargon and scholarly controversies. Frank McLynn, author of Genghis Khan, Napoleon and...