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The Great Siege of Malta - review
Posted on: 7 March 2025
If you really want to offend a Knight of the Order of St John I would recommend the βalapaβ. This seems to have been an open handed slap (presumably to the face) and is described by Marcus Bull in The...
β β β β β (2025)
review
New history books in February 2025
Posted on: 1 March 2025
Some attractive looking books published in February 2025 (UK, Hardback), with a unusually high proportion focussed on ancient history, and in particular Mesopotamian history. I love all this stuff, as...
new books
The Knights Templar - review
Posted on: 28 February 2025
It is a curious fact that there have been more books written about the Knights Templar than the number of Knights Templar that ever existed.1 The Knights Templar: History and Mystery by Tony McMahon...
β β β ββ (2024)
review
Only weeks before Charles II was invited to return to England, many still thought that a restoration was inconceivable.
Review of Alice Hunt, Republic
The Eagle and the Hart - review
Posted on: 16 February 2025
This new book on Richard II and Henry IV, by Helen Castor (a former Cambridge fellow and TV broadcaster, specialising in English medieval and Tudor history) is a gripping drama of two closely...
β β β β β (2024)
review
Republic - review
Posted on: 9 February 2025
The waiting is over. The soldiers on each side have finally marched into position, carrying their long pikes which they now lower to create an impenetrable wall of spikes. Many of the men are past...
β β β β β (2024)
review
New history books in January 2025
Posted on: 3 February 2025
I spotted 14 new history books in the wild last month (in the UK, in hardback). I always like to see a diversity of topics and periods, and this batch has a good range, from the ancient Mediterranean...
new books
The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages - review
Posted on: 25 January 2025
The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages Shane Bobrycki, assistant professor of medieval history at the University of Vienna1, has written an excellent short (177 page) book about early medieval Europe,...
β β β β β (2024)
review
New history books in December 2024
Posted on: 1 January 2025
It's the first post of the new year 2025 and unlike every other website on the internet I am going to start with a damp squib rather than a bang. Hopefully we will build to a crescendo over the coming...
new books
The Invention of Good and Evil - review
Posted on: 22 December 2024
The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality, by Hanno Sauer, has - I think - one of the best titles of any non-fiction book. Who could fail to be intrigued? After all who hasnβt...
β β β ββ (2024)
review
A society which has lost belief in its capacity to progress in the future will quickly cease to concern itself with its progress in the past.
Review of E. H. Carr, What is History
The Wager - review
Posted on: 8 December 2024
My sailing experience is fairly limited, but I do remember a trip in the North Sea as a boy, painfully tacking back and forth as we inched up the Yorkshire coast. Landlubber that I was, I still...
β β β ββ (2023)
review
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