E. H. Gombrich, ‘A Little History of the World', (Revd Ed., London, 2005), pp. 284.  ISBN: 978-0-300-14332-4 (paperback)Ernest Gombrich is best remembered as one of the most influential art historians and critics of the twentieth century. What is less well known is that at the age of twenty five (whilst...

Early Medieval Europe 300-1050: The Birth of Western Society David Rollason (Pearson), 2012 394pp., £22.99, paper, ISBN 978-1-4082-5121-8As a medievalist by training, I have always thought it unfortunate that medieval history does not figure above Key Stage 3 in the National Curriculum and has long since ceased to be a...

Early Medieval Kent 800-1220, Sheila Sweetinburgh (ed.) (Boydell Press Kent County Council), 2016 333pp., £50 hard, ISBN 978-0-85115-583-8. This is the tenth volume in the Kent History Project, supported by Kent County Council, that now covers the history of the county from the archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon period through to...

Educating Astley: The History of Education in a Warwickshire Village, David Paterson, Chilvers Coton Heritage Centre, 2014, 55p,£3-95 [+£2-00 postage and packing from Chilvers Coton Heritage Centre, Avenue Road, Nuneaton CV11 4LU]].  ISBN 978-0-9927628-1-0David Paterson has traced the history of Astley School from its origins as a 17th Century charity...

Edward II by Seymour Phillips (Yale English Monarchs, Yale University Press), 2010 679pp., £25 hard, ISBN 978-0-300-15657-7Stuck between two of the greatest medieval English monarchs his father Edward I, the ‘Hammer of the Scots' and his son Edward III, it is hardly surprising that Edward II has gained the reputation...

Edward III by Mark Ormrod (Yale English Monarchs, Yale University Press), 2011 721pp., £30, hard, ISBN 978-0-300-11910-7 With the publication of Edward III, the English Monarchs series now includes biographies of monarchs from Edward the Confessor to Mary Tudor (apart from Henry III and IV) and James II to George...

El Alamein: The Battle that Turned the Tide of the Second World War, Bryn Hammond, Osprey Publishing, 2012, 328 pp, ISBN 978-1-84908-640-0, £18.99. Bryn Hammond uses his scholarship and exhaustive research to make complex battles understandable. He has followed Cambrai 1917 with this very readable volume on the series of...

Elfrida: The First Crowned Queen of England by Elizabeth Norton (Amberley Publishing), 2013, 2014 - 19pp., £9.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-4456-3765-5 The role played by elite women in Anglo-Saxon England and their influence in both politics and religion is now widely recognised. Elfrida is perhaps the most powerful and notorious of...

Elizabeth Jennings: The Inward War, Dana Greene, Oxford University Press, 2018, 258p, £25-00. ISBN 978-0-19-882084-0. This biography contains much detail on Elizabeth Jennings’ life and poetry. Jennings (1926-2001), born into a Roman Catholic family in Oxford, was often depressed, guilt-ridden, needy and lonely. However, for long periods of her life she...

Amy Licence - (Amerberley Press), 2013 256 pp., £20 hard, ISBN 978-1-4456-0961-4 Elizabeth of York was the wife of Henry VII and the mother of the dynasty with three of her children becoming monarchs in their own right: Henry VIII succeeded his father; Margaret became Queen of Scotland and Mary...

England's First Demonologist: Reginald Scot &‘The Discovery of Witchcraft' Philip C. Almond (I B Tauris, London and New York, 2011) 246pp., hardback, £54.50 ISBN 978 1 84885 793 3Philip Almond of the University of Queensland here adds a ninth innovative study to his previously acclaimed works.  This is the first...

England’s Saintly Landscape, Trevor James, Lichfield Press, 2020, 95 pp, £10-00. ISBN 978-0-905985-94-7 The author is quick to credit W G Hoskins and Eilert Ekwall and their influence is readily apparent in the enthusiasm that permeates this study. Trevor James’ contention is that church dedications, place names, pilgrimage routes, local industries, fairs and...

Exclusionary Empire: English Liberties Overseas 1600-1900 by Jack P. Greene, (ed.)(Cambridge University Press), 2009  305pp., £16.99 paper, 978-0-521-13270-1The development of a comparative approach to British imperial history has been an important development in historiography over the past five years.  This was especially evident in the recently published Replenishing the Earth...

Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines 1740-1803, Ulrich L. Lehner (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2011) 266pp., hardback, £55.00, ISBN 978 0 199595 12 9.This is a revisionist study by an assistant professor of historical theology and church history at Marquette University, Milwaukee.  Traditionally the Benedictines have been regarded...

Erasmus Darwin and Evolution, Desmond King-Hele, Stuart Harris [3 Pingle Head, 171 Millhouses Lane, Sheffield S7 2HD], 2014, 212p, £8-00. ISBN 978-0-9542-1518-7 Desmond King-Hele is foremost amongst contemporary scholars who have explored the life, work and ideas of Erasmus Darwin. A substantial portion of this book is a basic introduction...

Brendan Simms, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453 to the Present (Allen Lane, 2013), pp. 690This book returns to territory which Simms' first explored in The Struggle for Mastery in Germany, 1779 - 1890. Like its predecessor, it owes much to the tradition of international history advanced by the likes...

Europe’s 100 Best Cathedrals, Simon Jenkins, Penguin Books Ltd, 2021, 360pp., £30, ISBN: 978-0-241452-63-9. Ever leafed through one of the visitor books found in many of our churches and read the comments? ‘Very peaceful’, ‘Lovely’, ‘Beautiful’, and similar well-meaning but bland observations are typical. Coming up with something more meaningful isn’t...

Fair Seed-Time: Robert Evans, Francis Newdigate and the Making of George Eliot, David Paterson, Troubadour, 2019, 306p, £12-00. ISBN 978-1-83859-146-5 ‘Fair seed-time’ is a phrase used by William Wordsworth and echoed in a comment by George Eliot when she wrote ‘these hours were seed to all my after good’. Co-incidental...

Famine, Fenians and Freedom 1840-1882, Richard Brown, Clio Publishing, Southampton, 2011, paperback, 581 pp., £27.95, ISBN 978095569878 Richard Brown's engagingly cryptic, alliterative title to this second volume of his rebellions and resistance trilogy inadequately conveys the extent and depth of his wide-ranging contextual analysis of this formative period of Irish...

Fighter Pilot, by Paul Richey.Orion Books, ISBN 978-0-3043-6339-1, re-issued 2012, £8.99.This is the story of an RAF pilot who went to France in September 1939 to support the BEF. The book, first published in 1941, is based on his diary through the Phoney War and then the Blitzkreig, and ends...