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...

Jan Hus, Religious Reform and Social Revolution in Bohemia, Thomas A. Fudge (I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2010) xx, 367pp., hardback, £54.50, ISBN 978 1 848851 429.Jan Hus is often compared with Martin Luther.  He lived a century before - c. 1372-1415.  Where Macaulay's schoolboy knows of Luther,...

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...

King John: an Underrated King, Graham E. Seel (Anthem Press, London and New York, 2012) xiv, 230pp., paperback £12.99, ISBN 978 0 85728 518 8 Graham Seel, Head of History at St. Paul's School, London, has produced this very readable account of one of the most controversial figures in English...

King's College Chapel 1515-2015. Art, Music and Religion in Cambridge, Jean Michel Massing and Nicolette Zeeman (eds), Harvey Miller Publishers, 2014, hardback, 416 pp, ISBN 9781909400214King's College Chapel, Cambridge, world famous today for its celebrated Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, now broadcast annually around the world as a prelude...

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,...

Korean Air War: Sabres, MIGs, and Meteors 1950-53, Michael Napier, Osprey Publishing, 2021, 320 pages, £30, ISBN HB 978-1-4728-44446  Korea is known as ‘The Forgotten War’ and air warfare is usually considered a specialist area, which means that Michael Napier has taken on a daunting job in writing a history...

Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings, Tom Shippey, Reaktion Books, hardback, 2018, ISBN 9781780239095 Tom Shippey’s major new study of the Vikings comes highly recommended, tipped by Professor Jesse Byock to become ‘a classic’ since ‘it takes the reader deep into the world and thought...

Lawrence of Arabia on War: The Campaign in the Desert 1916-18, Rob Johnson, Osprey Publishing, 2020, 368p, £25-00. ISBN 978-1-4728-3491-1 For those of us whose detailed knowledge of Lawrence of Arabia may have been drawn from Robert Graves’ classic Lawrence and the Arabs (1927), amplified by occasional textbook references, this really...

David Paterson. 2011, Troubador Publishing, £12.95.Histories of old established schools are often very interesting and this book is certainly no exception. The author taught history at King Edward's, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, for over thirty years and has only recently retired from there. He, therefore, knows his subject very well and he...

Love, Tommy: Letters Home from the Great War to the Present Day, Andrew Roberts, Osprey Publishing, Oxford. 2012, 255pp. £20. ISBN: 978-1-84908-791-9. Andrew Roberts has already published award winning books with a military theme. Here, he tackles conflict in the 20th and 21st Centuries from the point of view of...

Letters of Solidarity and Friendship: Czechoslovakia 1968-71, [ed] David Parker, Bacquier Books, 2017, 436p, £14-99. ISBN 978-5262-0603-9 These Letters of Solidarity and Friendship are, in effect a tribute by Professor David parker to a letter-writing relationship which his late father, Leslie Parker, had with Paul Zalud in Czechoslovakia. Leslie was...

Lincoln in the Atlantic World, Louise L. Stevenson (Cambridge University Press), 2015 277pp., £21.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-107-52423-1 We tend to think of Abraham Lincoln as the almost archetypal American president, an individual who rose from log-cabin to the White House, who defended the Union against the threat posed by the...

Literary Trails: Haworth and the Brontës, Catherine Rayner and David Walford, Pen and sword History, 2018, 276p, £14-99. ISBN 9781526720856 Crossing the moors in West Yorkshire, even in mid-summer, there is a sense of being remote in what clearly at times is a challenging and bleak landscape. It is in...

London Fog, Christine L. Corton, Harvard University Press, 2015, 391p, £22-95, ISBN 978-0-674-08835-1 London Fog is a very thorough piece of research into a phenomenon which was effectively ended by the Clean Air Act of 1962. It is written in a very engaging manner and its scientific exploration is exemplary....