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Fifth Sun - review
Posted on: 17 December 2021
If Flamingo Snake was going to get out of the palace alive he would have to drum with all the exuberance, the raw power that he possessed. It shouldn't even have been him leading the show: the chief...
★★★★★ (2020)
review
Ravenna - review
Posted on: 10 December 2021
This is the celebrated Byzantine Emperor Justinian who is credited with reconquering the Western Roman Empire through his general Belisarius. The image itself is not from the capital Constantinople...
★★★★★ (2020)
review
A Curious History of Sex - review
Posted on: 3 December 2021
Explicit prose warning! (although only when necessary.) Sex, as we all know, has been around for about two billion years or so. But we humans continue to struggle with what sex is supposed to be all...
★★★★☆ (2020)
review
What is the benefit of reading history books?
Posted on: 19 November 2021
...he’s a functioning microcosm of us all. I mean, we’re all trying to find out who the hell we are, aren’t we? Jason Bourne, in Robert Ludlum’s “Bourne Identity” Grievously wounded: close to...
opinion
Scenes from Prehistoric Life - review
Posted on: 12 November 2021
4070 years ago on the east coast of Britain a small community of about 200 people built a circular wooden palisade about 7 metres across. Right in the centre of this circle of upright timbers was an...
★★★☆☆ (2021)
review
The Enlightenment - review
Posted on: 5 November 2021
Citizens of the world The author, Ritchie Robertson, is a professor of German language and literature at the University of Oxford. His treatment of the Enlightenment is broad, both in terms of subject...
★★★★★ (2020)
review
The Fall of Robespierre - review
Posted on: 29 October 2021
GREAT CONSPIRACY. Today would have been one of the greatest events that France has ever known if conspiracy had had its way. Celestin Guittard de Floriban What had so shocked Parisian diarist...
★★★★★ (2021)
review
From Rebel to Ruler - review
Posted on: 22 October 2021
My in-laws like to tell a story about when the communists came to town. Their home was in a small village just outside the county town, about 5 hours west of Beijing. In the 1930s and 1940s the town...
★★★☆☆ (2021)
review
Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister - review
Posted on: 15 October 2021
This is a book about the three most famous sisters in Chinese history: the Soong sisters. They were international celebrities: highly educated, politically pivotal and ridiculously rich. They embodied...
★★★☆☆ (2019)
review
Personality in popular history
Posted on: 8 October 2021
Can there be too much personality in popular history? This post is a rumination on the pitfalls and promises of focussing a history book too much on personality… or not at all. Along the way I will...
opinion
Dress Codes - review
Posted on: 1 October 2021
Is fashion frivolous? Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History acknowledges that it can judged to be, but also shows that it is and has been a serious matter. Whether we want them to or not,...
★★★★☆ (2021)
review
Past Mistakes - review
Posted on: 24 September 2021
Close your eyes and conjure up an image of Christopher Columbus… Did you do it? What did you see? If you are anything like me you will envisage a cheerful little fellow wearing a captains hat,...
★★★★☆ (2020)
review