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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages by Dirk Meier(Boydell Press), 2009 184pp. £14.99 paper, ISBN 978-1843-383512-7The first thing that stands out in this book is the wonderful colour illustrations and maps.  The second is the discussion of the nature and construction of ships such as the cog, carrack...

Northamptonshire Black History Association Pub 2008; ISBN:978 0 9557139 1 0; £12.95 [+£2.30 p and p] from: NBHA, Doddridge Centre, 109 St James Road, Northampton, NN5 5LD. How fortunate Northamptonshire history teachers are! With the current emphasis on community cohesion and diversity in the New Secondary Curriculum, they are presented...

She-wolves, Helen Castor, Faber and Faber, 2010, 474p, ISBN 978-0-571-23705-0, £20-00.The central focus of Helen Castor's She-wolves is the fact that, when Edward VI died in 1553, every one of his potential successors within the Tudor line was a woman. Unlike in France, there was no clear bar to a...

Ships and Shipbuilders. Pioneers of Design and Construction by Fred M. Walker. Seaforth Publishing, 2010, hardback, 256pp, £25.00, ISBN 9781848320727 This useful reference book offers biographical assessments of the contribution to shipbuilding of more than 130 notable engineers, scientists, philosophers, businessmen, shipwrights, naval architects and inventors who influenced ship design...

The Spies of Winter: The CGHQ Codebreakers who fought the Cold War Sinclair McKay, Aurum Press, 2016, 330 pp., £9.99, ISBN 978 178131 298 8. A superbly accessible account of the intelligence war after 1945. Very good on the nature of the life, on relations with the United States, and...

Sir Richard Tangye 1833-1906: A Cornish Entrepreneur in Victorian Birmingham, Stephen Roberts, Birmingham Biographies, 2015, 65p, £4-99. ISBN 9781512207910. For those interested in the industrial and commercial history of Birmingham, Eric Hopkins’ Birmingham: the First Manufacturing Town in the World 1760-1840 [1989] has been our essential starting point. In contrast...

Sir Robert Peel: The Life and Legacy by Richard A. Gaunt(I.B. Tauris), 2010 264pp., £20 hard. ISBN 978-184885354The two-volume biography of Peel by Norman Gash was published in 1961 and 1967.  Gash sees Peel as a pragmatic administrator and an instinctively consensual politician whose great achievement was to establish the...

Sixties Ireland: Reshaping the Economy, State and Society, 1957-1973 by Mary E. Daly (Cambridge University Press), 2016 426pp., £19.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-316-50931-9 This provocative new history of Ireland during the long 1960s exposes the myths of Ireland’s modernisation. Mary Daly questions traditional interpretations which see these years as a time...

Slavery and the British Country House, Madge Dresser and Andrew Hann, eds, English Heritage, 2013, hardback, ISBN 9781848020641. Since the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle hit the big screens in 2013 this timely, accessible and scholarly multi-authored volume by English Heritage, whose publication coincided with the year of the film's...

Slavery in Yorkshire: Richard Oastler and the campaign against child labour in the Industrial Revolution - John A. Hargreaves and E. A. Hilary Haigh, (eds.) (University of Huddersfield), 2012 238pp., rrp £24 paper , ISBN 978-1-86218-107-6. The book is also available at £20 here... In Kirkheaton churchyard near Huddersfield there...

Snapdragon: The World War II Exploits of Darby’s Ranger and Combat Photographer Phil Stern, Liesl Bradner, Osprey, 2018, 312p, £20-00, ISBN 978-1-4728-2850-7 Phil Stern was a highly successful photographer of fashionable and remarkable figures in the post-war era. His range extended from Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra to the more serious...

Somme: 141 Days, 141 Lives, Alexandra Churchill and Andrew Holmes, The History Press, 2016, hardback, £25.00, 240 pp, ISBN 9780750965323 This deeply reflective, beautifully produced volume has been published to commemorate the centenary of the Battle of the Somme and focuses upon the experiences of 141 fallen casualties who over...

Staffordshire’s War: Voices of the First World War, Karen Hunt, Amberley, 2017, 160p, £14-99. ISBN 978-1-4456-5785-1 In Staffordshire’s War Professor Karen Hunt has reflected the best intentions of the Editors of The Historian when they initiated their ‘Aspects of War’ series of articles, designed to explore the widest possible context...