How Norwich Fought Against the Plague: Lessons from the Past, Frank Meeres, Poppyland Publishing, 2021, 138p, £9.95. ISBN 9781909796898 The importance of this book has already been acknowledged at a regional level by having been awarded the 2021 East Anglia Book Award for History and Tradition. What Frank Meeres has...

Told through words and pictures: how women challenged the "go home and sit still - no petticoats here" message from Whitehall and did their bit during the First World War. Women in the First World War: Neil R Storey & Molly Housego ISBN: 978-07478-752-0, £5.99, Published 10th April 2010When war...

Identifying the English: A History of Personal Identification, 1500 to the Present by Edward Higgs  (Continuum), 2011  286pp., £25 hard, ISBN 978-1-4411-8203-6 Who we are is increasingly seen as an important issue in British politics and is an integral part of the increasingly pervasive and intrusive ‘information and security state'.  We...

If the Allies Had Fallen. Sixty Alternate Scenarios of World War II by Dennis Showalter and Harold C. Deutsch. Frontline Books, 2010, hardback, 304 pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781848325661The joint editors of this stimulating collection of explorations of alternative military strategies of the Second World War, Dennis Showalter and Harold Deutsch,...

If the Kaiser Comes. Defence Against A German Invasion of Britain in the First World War, Mike Osborne, Fonthill, 2017, paperback, 192 pp., £16.99, ISBN 9781781555750  As commemoration of so many facets of the First World War continue to mark its centenary, particularly focused upon the casualties and fatalities sustained...

Imperial Violence and the Path to Independence: India, Ireland and the Crisis of Empire by Shereen Ilahi (I.B. Tauris, 2016) 258pp., £ 59, ISBN 978-1-78453-130-0 In the aftermath of World War I, the British Empire was hit by two different crises on opposite sides of the world: the Jallianwala Bagh...

In Cold War Skies: NATO and Soviet Air Power, 1949-89, Michael Napier, Osprey, 2020, 320p, £30-00. ISBN 978-1-4728-3688-5. This book will appeal to two separate audiences. At one level Michael Napier has provided in extraordinary detail the nature and development of air defence in the widest reaches of the European...

In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands, Martin Gilbert, (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2010) xxiii, 424pp., hardback, £25, ISBN 978 0 7210 3369 8This is a remarkable book by Sir Martin Gilbert, a bestselling author.  He refers to the Biblical story of Ishmael and...

In Search of the New Woman: Middle-Class Women and Work in Britain 1870-1914 by Gillian Sutherland (Cambridge University Press), 2015187pp., £55 hard, ISBN 978-1-107-09279-2 Women increasingly demanded and gained constructive and useful roles in society with campaigns for control over property, economic independence and admission to education and to the...

In the Context of Eternity. A Short History of the Christian Church, David Arnold, Grosvenor House Publishing Limited, 2015, paperback, 303 pp., £10.00, ISBN 9781781484487 This compact overview, by a recently elected Fellow of the Historical Association, combines erudition with accessibility and is a welcome addition to the history of...

Notice to Quit: The Great Irish Famine Evictions by Perry Curtis, Jr (Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University and Cork University Press), 2015 44pp., £9.95, €11.95, paper, ISNM 978-0-9904686-6-0 Death in Every Paragraph: Journalism & the Great Irish Famine by Michael Foley (Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University...

Ireland: A History by Thomas Bartlett(Cambridge University Press), 2010625pp., £25 hard, ISBN 0-978-521-19720-5There are many good histories of Ireland such as the Oxford History of Ireland series, the two volumes by Connolly on the early modern period and Paul Bew on the period after 1789 but we lack a well-written...

Ironside. The Authorized Biography of Field Marshal Lord Ironside, by Edmund Ironside, Stroud: The History Press, 2018, 414 pp., ISBN 978 0750 963794, £40.00 An effective and interesting work that makes excellent use of the Ironside diaries in order to throw particular light on the interwar British army and the...

Ivy-Mantled Tower. A History of the Church and Churchyard of St Mary Hornsey, Middlesex, Bridget Cherry, Hornsey Historical Society, 2015, hardback, 133 pp., £19.50, ISBN 9780905794532 The Hornsey Historical Society are to be congratulated on their production of this beautifully illustrated, informative history of a parish church whose derelict tower...

J.L. Petit: Britain’s Lost Pre-Impressionist, Philip Modiano, RPS Publications, 122p. 2022, £20. ISBN 978-1-9164931-2-4.  Philip Modiano’s championing of prolific Victorian water-colourist and pioneering campaigner for the preservation of ancient buildings, Reverend John Louis Petit [1801-1868], continues to raise the profile of this neglected Staffordshire artist. His new book follows on...

James of St George and the Castles of the Welsh Wars, Malcolm Hislop, Pen and Sword, 2020, 302p, £25-00. ISBN 9781526741301 The title of Malcom Hislop’s book tends to understate the extent of what he manages to embrace in this important volume. The role of James of St George in...

Joan of Arc, Helen Castor, Faber and Faber,2014, 328p, £20-00 [ebook £12-99]. ISBN 978-0-571-284627. The full title of this work is Joan of Arc: A History and this guides the reader into an expectation that this is not just another biography of Joan of Arc. With the meticulous scholarship that...

Jonathan Dewhurst: the Curtain Falls, Philip and Susan Taylor, Matador, 2011, ISBN 978-1848767-263. £12-00.In 2001 Philip and Susan Taylor published their Jonathan Dewhurst: The Lancashire Tragedian. In this work they introduced the life and work of Philip's distant relative, Jonathan Dewhurst, who had been an actor and manager of the...

Joseph Chamberlain International Statesman, National Leader, Local Icon, Ian Cawood and Chris Upton, (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, £63, hardback, ISBN 9781137528841 Sadly Chris Upton died in the final stages of the project which generated this collection of essays, namely the Joseph Chamberlain Centenary conference held at Newman University Birmingham, in July...

Kingsley Wood: Scenes from a Political Life 1925-1943, Hugh Gault, Gretton Books, 2017, 564p, £25-00.  ISBN 978-0-9562041-9-6 It is a truism that we only know what we know, a statement as appropriate for professional historians as everyone else. Lecturing on Neville Chamberlain’s social reforms or the role of Winston Churchill,...