History
Royal Marriage Secrets, by John Ashdown-Hill - review
My brother Pericles Wyatt, as my father liked to say, is by blood the rightful king of England, the nephew…
Stage Blood, by Michael Blakemore - review
Stage Blood, as its title suggests, is as full of vitriol, back-stabbing and conspiracy as any Jacobean tragedy. In this…
Pine by Laura Mason; Lily, by Marcia Reiss - review
After the success of their animal series of monographs, Reaktion Books have had the clever idea of doing something similar…
Hanns and Rudolf, by Thomas Harding - review
Confronted by this lavishly endorsed book — ‘compelling’ (David Lodge), ‘gripping’(John le Carré),‘thrilling’ (Jonathan Freedland) — I felt depressed. Two…
Why does Max Hastings have such a hatred for the British military?
David Crane is taken aback by the particular contempt Max Hastings appears to reserve for the British at the outbreak of the first world war
The Prince of medicine, by Susan P. Mattern - review
In the first draft of the screenplay for the film Gladiator, the character to be played by Russell Crowe (‘father…
Noble Endeavours, by Miranda Seymour - review
Like Miranda Seymour, the author of this considerable work on Anglo-German relations, I was raised in a Germanophile home. I…
Narcoland, by Anabel Hernandez - review
It is by now surely beyond doubt that those governments committed to fighting the war on drugs — and on…
The Tragedy of Liberation, by Frank Dikötter - review
The historian of China Frank Dikötter has taken a sledgehammer to demolish perhaps the last remaining shibboleth of modern Chinese…
Uncle Bill, by Russell Miller - review
Given the outcome of recent military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is pertinent to look for one particular quality…
Danubia, by Simon Winder - review
The inbred Habsburg monarchs, who for centuries ruled without method over a vast, ramshackle empire, managed to leave an indelible mark on modern Europe, says Sam Leith
The Downfall of Money, by Frederick Taylor - review
In Germany in 1923 money was losing its value so fast that the state printing works could not keep up.…
Dot Wordsworth: We've been self-whipping since 1672
Isabel Hardman of this parish explained after last week’s government defeat that a deluded theory among the party leadership had…
The Rocks Don’t Lie, by David R. Montgomery - review
James McConnachie finds that theology and geology have been unlikely bedfellows for centuries
Russian Roulette, by Giles Milton - review
Had Onan not spilled his seed upon the ground, he might have invented invisible ink. The possibility had not occurred…
The Huguenots, by Geoffrey Treasure - review
There could be no backsliding while preparing the next plot, murder or battle in the French Wars of Religion, says Hywel Williams
A Classless Society, by Alwyn W. Turner - review
The title of Alwyn W. Turner’s book could deter readers. Even the Hollywood film The Secret Lives of Dentists promised…
The Good Nurse, by Charles Graeber - review
Charles Cullen, an American nurse, murdered several hundred patients by the administration in overdose of restricted drugs. Hospitals should be…
The Rainborowes, by Adrian Tinniswood - review
Adrian Tinniswood, so gifted and spirited a communicator of serious history to a wide readership, here brings a number of…
Anne Boleyn’s last secret
Why was the queen executed with a sword, rather than an axe?
The Coronation Chair and the Stone of Scone, by Warwick Rodwell - review
The Coronation Chair currently stands all spruced up, following last year’s conservation, under a crimson canopy, by the west entrance…
Sorry – the Vikings really were that bad
Forget that guff about peaceful farmers with an interest in travel
Tudor, by Leanda de Lisle - review
The Tudors, England’s most glamorous ruling dynasty, were self-invented parvenus, with ‘vile and barbarous’ origins, Anne Somerset reminds us
Island, by J. Edward Chamberlin - review
‘Tom Island’ — that was the name I was given once by a girl I met on an island in…
The Life and Death of the Spanish Republic, by Henry Buckley - review
With Spain’s economic crisis in the forefront of global news, it would be fascinating to see what a reporter of…
