Britain’s Greatest Prime Minister: Lord Liverpool, Martin Hutchinson, The Lutterworth Press, 2020, 429 pp, £50.00, ISBN 978-0-7188-9563-1  A continuous period of almost 15 years as Prime Minister suggests that Liverpool possessed a large array of talents, yet the average student of modern British history knows much less about him and his characteristics than those...

Britain’s Jews in the First World War, Paula Kitching, Amberley, 2019, 286p, £14-99.  ISBN 978-1-4456-6320-3 The title of this book does not fully convey the importance of its contents and focus. It provides a variety of perspectives on the Jewish involvement in the British war effort in the Great War....

British Military Service Tribunals, 1916-1918, James McDermott, Manchester University Press, 2011, 256 pp., ISBN 9780719084775.A scholarly analysis of the Military Service Tribunals that throws great light on the nature of society and the workings of the state. The Tribunals were formed following the introduction of conscription in order to consider...

Case Red: The Collapse of France, 1940, Robert Forczyk, Osprey Publishing, 2017, 464p, £20-00. ISBN 978-1-4728-2442-4 Case Red is a deliberate and very helpful attempt by the American military historian Robert Forczyk to refocus our perspectives on exactly what did happen in June 1940. His view is that most historians...

Cemeteries and Graveyards, Celia Heritage, Pen and Sword, 2022, 236p, £15.99. ISBN 978 1 52670 237 1. This is a most thorough and engaging book. Its focus is specifically the widest context of burials in England and Wales. As a handbook to be used by anyone wanting to understand burial...

Challenge of Battle: The Real Story of the British Army in 1914, Adrian Gilbert, Osprey Publishing, 2014, 304p, £20,ISBN: 978-1-84908-859-6.With the approaching centenary of World War I, there are many books already appearing relating to what is still a massive event in British history, eventually involving almost every family in...

Charles I and the Aristocracy, 1625-1642, Richard Cust, Cambridge University Press, 2013, 350 pp., £65.00, ISBN 978-1-107-00990-5An innovative and important study that emphasises Charles I's conservatism in conceiving of the aristocracy as the principal support of royal authority. Cust suggests that this policy worked, as it provided Charles with the...

Charles I & The People of England, David Cressy, Oxford University Press, 2017, 447pp. £14.99 paper, ISBN 978-0-19-870830-8 Originally published in 2015, this book is a blend of historical analysis and constitutional theory, parish politics and ecclesiology, military, cultural, and social history. Charles I and the People of England is the first major attempt...

The Boys of '67: Charlie Company's War in Vietnam,Andrew Wiest, 2012, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, 376 pp, £20.00.ISBN: 978-1-78096-202-3.  Andrew Wiest is a leading American military historian, who has published several works on the Vietnam War and World War I. He has lectured extensively both in the U.S.A. and Britain. This book...

Chartism: A Global History and other essays, Richard Brown, Authoring History, 2016, 324 pp. £10.96, paper, ISBN 1534981438 This volume of essays written partly, the author reveals, as a response to a student enquiring in 2003 ‘What impact did Chartism have on the rest of the world brings the word...

Richard Brown, Authoring History, 2015, paperback, 408 pp., ISBN 9781517788988 J.M.W. Turner's romanticised depiction, completed in 1838, of vessels being unloaded in the Dee estuary with the first of Edward I's castles at Flint symbolising the eventual subjugation of medieval Wales by the English crown adorns the cover of the...

Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places, The Midlands and the South, Richard Brown, Authoring History, 2015, paperback, 403 pp., ISBN 9781501017247This volume focusing upon the local and regional dimension of Chartism in the Midlands and the South, is Richard Brown's sixth excursion into Chartism, which with a sequel print volume encompassing...

Chartism: Rise and Demise, Richard Brown, Authoring History, paperback, 2014, ISBN 9781495390340 Chartism, the mass petitioning movement for universal male suffrage, conveniently punctuated with intense bursts of activity around its three national petitions of 1839, 1842 and 1848, appears deceptively familiar to many students. These three fairly distinctive phases of...

Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution by Jane Humphries(Studies in Economic History, Cambridge University Press), 2010 439pp., £60, hard, ISBN 978-0-521-84756-8In Kirkheaton churchyard near Huddersfield there is a 15 foot stone obelisk topped by a flame that commemorates ‘The dreadful fate of 17 children who fell unhappy...

Children of the Labouring Poor: The working lives of children in nineteenth-century Hertfordshire, Eileen Wallace, 2010, UH Press, 192p, ISBN 978-1-905313-49-5, £14-99.This very informative and well-sourced book achieves much more than its titles infers. Eileen Wallace has researched and explored the working lives of poor children in nineteenth-century Hertfordshire in...

China's Wars: Rousing the Dragon 1894-1949, Philip Jowett, Osprey, 2013, 408p, £25-00. ISBN 978-1-78200-407-3This is richly illustrated and a work of meticulous detail. Anyone interested in the small detail of the various civil wars and invasions which beset China between 1894 and the moment that Mao Tse-tung secured Communist control...

Chinoiserie, Richard Hayman, Shire Publications, 2021, 64p., £8.99. ISBN 978-1-78442-464-0.  Chinoiserie describes the highly imaginative decorative style inspired by a fascination for oriental culture that emerged around 1650, peaked during the Rococo exuberance of the mid-18th century, before going out of fashion in the early-19th century. Motifs including pagodas, pavilions, flowers and...

Churchyards (Britain's Heritage series), Roger Bowdler, Amberley Publishing, 2019, 64p, £8-99. ISBN 9781445691114 This book is dedicated to the memory of Frederick Burgess, the author of English Churchyard Memorials (1963), from whom many of us learned to study and understand what we find in churchyards. This carefully developed study by...

Cinema: The Whole Story, ed. Philip Kemp (Thames & Hudson, 2011) 576pp., flexibound, £19.95, ISBN 978 0 500 289471 Sir Christopher Frayling describes film as the art form of the twentieth century.  This is a quite exceptional comprehensive study of the history of the cinema from the earliest days to...

Clarke, Petit and St Mark’s: A 19th Century journey on the Isle of Man, Philip Modiano, RPS Publications, 2022, 44p., £9.00 [plus postage]. ISBN 9781916493117. Contact via enquiries@revpetit.com In this extraordinary booklet Philip Modiano explains the architectural and personal relationship built up between the notable water-colourist, the Revd John Louis Petit,...