The Fighting Essex Soldier: Recruitment, war and society in the fourteenth century, [ed] Christopher Thornton, Jennifer Ward and Neil Wiffen, Essex Publications, 2017, 178p, £18-99. ISBN 978-1-909291-88-1. Ten years ago The Historian (97, Winter 2007, pp6-13) published an article entitled ‘What did you do in the Hundred Years War, Daddy?, with...

The Financial Affairs of David Lloyd George, Ian Ivatt, Welsh Academic Press, 2019, 160p, £19-99. ISBN 978-1-86057-1251. After 50 years of awareness of politically unsympathetic commentators making insinuations regarding David Lloyd George’s financial dealings, with particular reference to the ‘Lloyd George Political Fund’, Ian Ivatt has done a valuable service in...

The First Blitz: Bombing London in the First World War, Ian Castle, Osprey Publishing, 2015, 208p, £14-99. ISBN 978-1-4728-1529-3 Whilst it is generally a matter of common understanding the ‘Blitz’ was a Second World War phenomenon, Ian Castle argues very strongly and cogently that London had experienced a sustained ‘blitz’...

The First World War The War to End All Wars, Peter Simkins, Geoffrey Jukes and Michael Hickey, Osprey, hardback, 2013, 364 pp. £25 ISBN 9781782002802This conventionally, ironically titled, composite edition of four predecessor volumes first published in 2003, introducing the war and then focusing upon the three main theatres of...

The First World War: The War to End All Wars, Peter Simkins, Geoffrey Jukes & Michael Hickey, 2013, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, 364 p. £25.00. ISBN: 978-1-78200-280-2.With the forthcoming Centenary of World War I there will be many books about its course. The authors have produced a detailed and well-researched account...

The Florentines: From Dante to Galileo, Paul Strathern, Atlantic Books, 2021, 372p, £20-00. ISBN 9781786498724. Very occasionally we are offered an entirely new perspective on a body of detail with which we already seem entirely familiar but which has the effect of transforming our understanding. Paul Strathern’s The Florentines: From...

The Franciscans in the Middle Ages, Michael Robson (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge and New York first published 2006, reprinted in paperback 2009) xiv, 239 pp., paperback £16.99, ISBN 978 1 8436 35158This book, by the Director of Studies in Theology at St Edmund's College, Cambridge, surveys the history of the...

C. H. Lawrence - I.B. Tauris), 2013   245 pp., £22.50 paper, ISBN 978-1-78076-467-2 In the early-thirteenth century, the Church was in crisis challenged by a confident new secular culture associated with the expansion of towns, the rise of literature and development of new sciences, the creation of the first universities...

The Frozen Chosen: the 1st Marine Division and the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, Osprey Publishing, 2016, £20, 296 pages, ISBN 978-1-4728-1436-4 The title of this excellent book doesn’t do it justice.  As well as chronicling the battles of the US 1st Marine Division in Korea in...

The Georgian Town House, Pat Dargan, Amberley, hardback, 2013, 160 pp. ISBN 9781445614038The tercentenary of the accession of George 1 in 2014 has revived interest in the legacy of Georgian England, which includes extensive numbers of elegant Georgian houses throughout the British Isles, which Pat Dargan contends in this attractively...

The Geraldines and Medieval Ireland: The Making of a Myth, Peter Crooks & Sean Duffy (editors); Four Courts Press, 2016, 408pp., €50 hard, ISBN978-1-84882-571-2. From the earliest moments of their involvement in Ireland, the Geraldines (or FitzGeralds) - the greatest of the Anglo-Norman dynasties established in Ireland after 1169 - became shrouded in...

The Golden Horseshoe. The Wartime Career of Otto Kretschmer, U-Boat Ace, Frontline Books, 2011, paperback, 210 pp., £13.99 ISBN 9781848326149; The Rice Paddy Navy. U.S. Sailors Undercover in China, Linda Kush, Osprey Publishing, 2012, hardback, 294 pp., £20.00 ISBN 9781849088114; The S.A.S. in Tuscany 1943-45, Brian Lett, Pen and Sword...

The Grand Old Duke of York. A Life of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, 1763-1827, Derek Winterbottom, Pen and Sword Books, Barnsley, 2016, hardback, £19.99, ISBN 9781473845770 This rehabilitation of the military career of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, with which we were all acquainted from...

The Grand Tour, Mike Rendell, Shire Publications, 2022, 64p, £8-99. ISBN 978-1-78402-695-4.  ‘The Grand Tour’ became a major rite of passage for many young aristocrats and was at its peak in the mid-18th century, when Europe experienced a rare three decades of relative peace. It was inspired by Catholic priest and...

The Great Famine, (ed) John Gibney, Pen and Sword History, 2018, 136p, £12-99. ISBN 9781526736635. This selection of essays, edited by John Gibney, is the first instalment of a collaboration between Pen and Sword History and the History Ireland magazine. Its focus is the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s...

The Great Passion, James Runcie, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022, 260p, £16.99. ISBN 978-1-4088-8551-2. One of my academic mentors, Professor Alan Everitt, believed that novels set in carefully researched setting could be a very reliable contemporary source for historians. My experience confirms his judgement: Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat...

The Great War Explained: A Simple Story and Guide,Philip Stevens, Pen and Sword Books, 2012,  222p, £19.99.ISBN: 978-1-84884-764-4.As we approach the centenary of the outbreak of The Great War in 1914, no doubt many books will appear on its causes and the events in it. This book is a good...

The Greatest Show on Earth: A History of the Circus by Linda Simon(Reakiton Books), 2014296pp., £29 hard, ISBN 978-1-78023-356-1The pantomime and the circus have long held a special place in people's imagination. Dazzling, clamorous and exotic, both are culturally evolving theatres of the improbable and impossible. From the days of...

The Green Road into the Trees: An Exploration of England, Hugh Thomson, 2012, Preface, hardback, 310p, ISBN 978-1-84809-332-4, £18-99. This is not a conventional work of local history but it has local history affiliations and dimensions. It is very idiosyncratic in approach but it is nonetheless very engaging. Hugh Thomson,...

The Gypsy ‘Menace', Populism and the New Anti-Gypsy Politics, Michael Stewart (editors preface by Misha Glenny (Hurst& Co., London, 2012) 382pp., paperback, £18.95, ISBN 978 1 84904 220 8 Attitudes to Roma and Gypsies in many EU countries have changed considerably in the last five years or so.  Increasingly the...