Book review – History
Sunday roasts and beaded bubbles: dining with the poets
In December 1817 Benjamin Robert Haydon — vivid diarist and painter of huge but inferior canvases of historic events —…
Roll up, roll up! A history of the circus from Ancient Egypt to the present
Nell Gifford joins a colourful troupe of acrobats, contortionists, lion-tamers, freaks and funambulists
How the smile came to Paris (briefly)
In 1787 critics of the Paris Salon were scandalised by a painting exhibited by Mme Vigée Le Brun. The subject…
All you’ll ever need to know about the history of England in one volume
Here is a stupendous achievement: a narrative history of England which is both thorough and arresting. Very few writers could…
Transnistria: a breakaway republic of a breakaway republic
Transnistria is not an area well-served by travel literature or, really, literature of any kind. The insubstantial-seeming post-Soviet sandwich-filling between…
Mecca: from shrine to shopping mall
The Saudis, official custodians of Islam’s holiest place, have bulldozed its historical sites, perverted its religion and turned Mecca into one vast shopping mall, says Justin Marozzi
Not a barrel of laughs: a history of hogsheads, kegs and puncheons
Few people, perhaps, will immediately seize on this title as just the thing for a relative’s Christmas, even if their…
Scotland’s miraculous century (it started with the Union)
In 1707 Scotland surrendered what it had of its independence by the Treaty of Union with England. That independence had…
The king who blamed everything that went wrong on God
Geoffrey Parker is a product of Nottingham and Christ’s College Cambridge, and I think was once a pupil of the…
From head-shrinking to skull-seeking: a history of the severed head
A severed head, argues Frances Larson in her sprightly new book, is ‘simultaneously a person and a thing… an apparently…
In search of dead men's bones
Skulls, femurs, ribs, pelvises, piled on top of each other in a chaotic heap: this, Denise Inge discovered, was what…
The woman who invented the Italian resistance
Italo Calvino, the Italian arch-fabulist, wrote a foreword to this celebrated wartime diary when it appeared in Italy in 1956.…
Why the most important years in history were from 1347 to 1352
A group of retired Somerset farmers were sitting about in the early 1960s, so Ian Mortimer’s story goes, debating which…
Does Boris Johnson really expect us to think he’s Churchill?
An eccentric, thoroughgoing genius, surfing every wave with a death-defying self-belief — Philip Hensher wonders who Boris Johnson can be thinking of
Four ways to win Waterloo
The Kaiser’s war deprived Britain of her centenary celebrations of the victory at Waterloo. It also set the propagandists something…
Why prefabs really were fab
Sir Winston Churchill did not invent the prefab, but on 26 March 1944 he made an important broadcast promising to…
How Hitler's dreams came true in 1946
In 1946, in the aftermath of a devastating war, the world seemed a very dark place indeed, says Sam Leith
Narrative history at its best – and bloodiest
Anyone thinking of bringing out a book on Waterloo at the moment must be very confident, very brave or just…
More derring dos and don’ts from Paddy Leigh Fermor
Recent years have seen the slim but splendid Patrick Leigh Fermor oeuvre swell considerably. In 2008 came In Tearing Haste,…
Hugh Trevor-Roper: the spy as historian, the historian as spy
Shortly after the war began in September 1939, the branch of the intelligence services called MI8, or the Radio Security…
The forgotten flank of the forgotten corps of the Forgotten Army
The British who fought in Burma became known as the ‘Forgotten Army’ because this was a neglected theatre of the…
Enjoy gin but don’t read books? Or read them only while drinking gin? This is the book for you
Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother’s Ruin Became the Spirit of London is a jaunty and diverting history of ‘a wonderful…
The real Dad’s Army was no joke
Dad’s Army, the sitcom to end all sitcoms, portrayed the Home Guard as often doddery veterans. In one episode, Private…
In defence of the Jacobins
The French Revolution ushered in not only a revolution of rolling heads but of talking ones too. ‘Speech-making was a…
A toast to beer, from Plato to Frank Zappa
‘He was a wise man who invented beer,’ said Plato, although I imagine he had changed his mind by the…
