Attlee: A Life in Politics, Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds (I. B. Taurus & Co., London and New York, 2012, first published in hardback 2010) xviii, 329pp., paperback, £12.99, ISBN 978 1 78076 215 9 Attlee gave the impression of being shy yet he is often thought of as the greatest prime minister...

Aunt Branwell and the Brontë Legacy, Nick Holland, Pen and Sword History, 2018, 160p, £12-99. ISBN 9781526722232. Nick Holland offers a very constructive and helpful introduction to the life and achievements of Elizabeth Branwell, ‘Aunt Branwell’ to the four Brontë children who survived into adulthood.  He is already a biographer...

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882, Authoring History, second edition, Richard Brown, 2017, £20.37, paperback, ISBN 978-1540352231; Three Rebellions: Canada, South Wales and Australia, Authoring History, Richard Brown, second edition, 2016, £19.72, paperback, ISBN 978-1539455707 The opportunity to revise and update the original texts as both these publications move into their second...

Bathing Beauties, Knobbly Knees and Music by the Sea: The Marina, Great Yarmouth 1937-1979, Colin Miller, Poppyland Publishing, 2019, 134p, £10-95, ISBN 9781909796584. At one level this is a detailed chronicle of what happened in Great Yarmouth when the local council decided in the 1930s to develop an open-air music...

Beerhouses, Brothels and Bobbies. Policing by Consent in Huddersfield and the Huddersfield District in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, David Taylor, University of Huddersfield Press, 2016, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, e-mail enquiries university.press@hud.ac.uk David Taylor, author of a pioneering research monograph on the development of policing in Middlesbrough, c1840-1914,...

Before Gallipoli: The 29th Division in Warwickshire and North Oxfordshire, December 1914 - March 1915, Chris Holland, Warwickshire Great War Publications, 144p, 2014, £9.95, ISBN: 978-0-9574216-2-2. Obtainable from Chris Holland, Plott Bungalow, Plott Lane, Stretton-on-Dunsmore, Rugby CV23 9HR. Among the many books now being published on World War I, Chris...

Alec Ryrie - Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford University Press), 2013 498pp., £45, hard, ISBN 978-0-19-956572-6 In 1500, Britain was a Catholic country like the rest of Christian Europe.  By 1600, it had been a variegated Protestant country, on and off, for over half a century.  A political imposition...

Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History - James M. Banner, Jr (Cambridge University Press, 2012) 267pp., £18.99 paper, ISBN 978-1107697287 Based on the author's more than fifty years as a professional historian in academic and other capacities, Being a Historian is a book that both...

Beleaguered and Besieged: A Year in a Place of Rocks, Hugh Gault, Gretton Books, 2021, 124p, £10-00. ISBN 978-1-999851-9-5 Long-standing contributor to The Historian Hugh Gault has developed a novel approach to the study of the siege of Mafeking. The novelty occurs in two forms. He has created a diary...

Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler's Capital 1939-45, Roger Moorhouse, Bodley Head, 2010, 432p, 38 photographs, ISBN 9780224080712, £25-00.In the popular mind Berlin will be seen as the capital of the Third Reich, at the heart of Hitler's aggressive and repressive regime. Roger Moorhouse has researched the ‘mood'...

Bible; The Story of the King James Version, 1611-2011, Gordon Campbell (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2010)xiii, 354pp., hardback, £16.99, US $24.95, ISBN 978 0 19 955759 2. In 1604 King James convened a conference to discuss the grievances of Puritans within the Church of England.  On the...

Craig Cabell, Graham A. Thomas and Allan Richards (Pen & Sword), 2012   192 pp., £19.99 hard, ISBN 978-1-84415-959-8 Edward Teach ‘Blackbeard' is one of the best known yet tantillisingly difficult to pin down because there have been so many accounts of his short, bloody career.  This new study looks for...

Blackout, Austerity and Pride. Life in the 1940s, Roger Atkinson, Roger Atkinson Publishing, Chester, 2015, hardback, 368 pp., £22.50, ISBN 97809933007 This illustrated memoir, recalled primarily ‘from actual experience’ relates how ‘an alert and intelligent boy, effectively orphaned at the age of 13’ set out ‘to gain a foothold in...

Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918, Katja Hoyer, The History Press, 2021, 253 pp, £14.99, ISBN 978-0-7509-9622-8  This admirably concise book gives due weight to the whole of the period from 1871 to 1918 rather than glossing over the years between the Bismarck Chancellorship and the...

Boudica at Mancetter: The Latin, the Land, The Logistics, Margaret Hughes, Atherstone Civic Society, 2020, 256p, £10-00 [and £3-00 p + p]. ISBN 978-0-9551803-3-0. Enquiries to secretary@atherstonecivicsociety.co.uk One of the locational mysteries of the history of these islands is where exactly did Queen Boudica fight her final battle in AD...

Breaking the Habit: A Life of History, Richard Brown, Authoring History, 2016, 175 pp., £7.13 paper, ISBN 9781530295234 In this retrospective but far from introspective, autobiographical memoir Richard Brown muses ‘on the nature of History in an increasingly challenging environment’. The author, familiar to readers of online reviews on the...

Britain 1780-1945: Society under Pressure, Richard Brown, Authoring History, paperback, 2018, ISBN 9781985773370. Richard Brown’s latest social history of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, like David Cannadine’s Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906, reflects at the outset, upon his good fortune to have grown up in the 1950s in what can...

Britain and the Arab Middle East: World War I and its aftermath by Robert H. Lieshout (I.B. Tauris, 2016) 510pp. £29.95, hard, ISBN 978-1-78453-583-4 In the long years since the invasion of Iraq, the short-lived ‘Arab Spring’, the unending civil wars in Syria, the meteoric rise of Islamic State and...

Members will be interested in BRITAIN AT WAR 1939 to 1945 what was life like during the war? By James Lingard (ISBN 9781434359339) which brings alive the harsh realities of life in Britain during the war - life full of uncertainty and the danger of impending death. It also provides...

Britain's Secret War 1939-45, Michael Smith., Andre Deutsch, 2011, 64 pp plus removable documents of historical importance, ISBN 978-0-233-00337-5, £30. Michael Smith is one of the country's foremost writers on defence and intelligence and he has used his considerable experience to produce this gazetteer to British Intelligence in the Second...