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...

Mary Queen of Scots and her Escapes, A. E. MacRobert. 2012. 170pp. Melrose Books, Ely, Cambridgeshire,£10.99. ISBN: 978-1-907732-90-4.   A.E.MacRobert has been involved in the study of history all his life. He taught the subject for many years and has done a large amount of research in it. This is not...

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...

Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires. The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians, Richard Sugg, Routledge, 2011, paperback, £24.99 ISBN 9780415674171. Notwithstanding its box-office blockbuster-style title, this serious, chronologically wide-ranging study by a lecturer in Renaissance Literature at the University of Durham identifies evidence of cannibalistic practices in...

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...

Napoleon, Georges Lefebvre, Routledge, 2011, paperback, 595 pp., ISBN 9780415610094 Napoleon Bonaparte continues to fascinate as a succession of bicentennial anniversaries recall his military exploits. This classic biographical study by one of France's pre-eminent twentieth century historians has now been published for the first time as a single volume in...

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...

Jonathan Michael Gray, ‘Oaths and the English Reformation' (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 272 ISBN: 978-1-107-01802-0 Price: £60.00 In this monograph, Jonathan Gray explores the significance of oaths and oath-theory in the implementation of the English Reformation. He argues that oaths were integral to the process of reform and that an analysis...

Offa: the quality of Mercia, Richard Stone, RSE Publishing, 2012, 34p, ISBN 978-0-9536-5273-0. £4-50. Available post-free from Richard Stone at 33 Arden Road, Barton-under-Needwood DE13 8LE, cheques made payable to ‘Richard Stone'. Offa was first and foremost king of Mercia [757-796] but he also had an undoubted national and international...

Olympic Visions; Images of the Games through History, Mike O'Mahony (Reaktion Books, London, 2012) 176pp., hardback, £22.00, 116 illustrations of which 50 are colour, ISBN 978 1 06189 910 1 The modern Olympic Games have become a world phenomenon since their beginning in 1896 and it has been a signal...

Pacts and Alliances in History. Diplomatic Strategy and the Politics of Coalitions, edited by Melissa P. Yeager and Charles Carter, I.B. Tauris, 2012, 295 pp., £59.95, ISBN 9781848857735A valuable collection on pacts and alliances, the building blocs of diplomacy and statecraft. Based on a conference held at the Mershon Center...

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...

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...