Wales and World War One, Robin Barlow, Gomer Press, 2014, 247p, £14-99. ISBN 9781848518858. Robin Barlow has deliberately set out to provide a different perspective on World War One. His experience was that Wales and the Welsh frequently did not warrant a separate entry in textbooks, being merely treated as...

Warriors of the Queen. Fighting Generals of the Victorian Age, William Wright, Spellmount, 2014, hardback, £25, ISBN 9780752493176The publisher's blurb characterizes the subjects of this collective biography as ‘a disparate and fascinating assemblage, made up of men of true military genius as well as egoists, fools and despots'. Surveying the...

Painting the Town. Scottish Urban History in Art, E. Patricia Dennison, Stuart Eydmann, Annie Lyell, Michael Lynch and Simon Stronach, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2013, hardback, ISBN 978 1 90833 204 2This beautifully illustrated volume amply lives up to its publisher's claim on its dust jacket of displaying...

Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain 1780-1945, Richard Brown, Authoring History, second edition, 2014, 616 pp. ISBN 1500143529 This second extended edition published a mere two years after the first edition of 2012 indicates not only the success of the first edition but also the continuing proliferation of books...

A Handbook for History Teachers, James A. Duthie, University Press of America, New York and Plymouth UK, paperback, x + 302 pp ISBN 9780761859901. Although James A. Duthie was born in Edinburgh and earned an MA in history from the University of Edinburgh, he trained as a teacher at Victoria...

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...

The Kaiser's Mission to Kabul: A Secret Expedition to Afghanistan in World War One - Jules Stewart - I. B. Taurus, 2014. ISBN: 978 1 78076 8755 232pp The amazing thing about this year's centenary of the start of World War One is the sheer amount of new information, stories...

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...

John Starling and Ivor Lee, No Labour, No Battle: Military Labour During the First World War, The History Press, 2009 (384pp, incl. 30pp of phtogrpahs; pbk, £19.99) You might wonder why I am telling you about this book.  There have been endless commemorations about WWI, but except for David Olusoga's...

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...

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...

The Peninsular War Atlas, Nick Lipscombe, Osprey Publishing,2014, 390p, £45-00.  ISBN 978-1-4728-0773-1.Nick Lipscombe's The Peninsular War Atlas is a fascinating exercise in mapping the British involvement in the IberianPeninsula, from 1808 until 1814. The maps and charts provided enable the reader to understand how the various campaigns unfolded, and the...

The Imperial Japanese Army - The Invincible Years 1941-42, Bill Yenne, Osprey Publishing, 2014, £20, 360 pages, ISBN 978-1-78200-932-0.This book by American scholar Bill Yenne will be equally welcome on both sides of the Atlantic.  Americans, British, Dutch and French tend to know about the fall of their own colonies...

Pillboxes and Tank Traps, Bernard Lowry, Shire Library, 2014,64p, £7-95.  ISBN 978-0-74781-356-9.There are two types of local history: what specifically happens in a particular location as compared with the patterns which emerge from widescale research at a local level. This book on Pillboxes and Tank Traps has had a particular...

The Building of England: How the History of England Has Shaped Our Buildings, Simon Thurley, William Collins, 2013, 544 pp.  £35.00, ISBN, 978 00 7301 140 9.An adroit book that handsomely links assured scholarship to an effective and accessible accountof the development of English architecture. Both a wonderful present and...

Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism, Thomas Brothers, W.W. Norton, 2014, 608 pp., $39.95, ISBN 978 0 393 06582 4An impressive and scholarly work that offers an accessible account of a key development in modernism. Secularly located in an understanding of the culture of interwar America, this book highlights Armstrong's role...

The Atlantic in World History, Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Oxford University Press, paperback, 2012, ISBN 9780195338096This welcome addition to the innovative New Oxford World History series provides an authoritative up-to-date introduction for a wide spectrum of readers to this seminal period in world history focusing specifically upon the role of the...

Slavery and the British Country House, Madge Dresser and Andrew Hann, eds, English Heritage, 2013, hardback, ISBN 9781848020641. Since the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle hit the big screens in 2013 this timely, accessible and scholarly multi-authored volume by English Heritage, whose publication coincided with the year of the film's...

Duels and Duelling, Stephen Banks, Shire, paperback, 2012, £6.99, 56 pp.,  ISBN 9780747811435.Stephen  Banks's compact volume on Duels and Duelling maintains the well-deserved reputation of this established series for attractively produced, well-illustrated and well-researched thematic studies accessible to the general reader. The index ranging from Achilles to Zola (Emile) provides...

The Georgian Town House, Pat Dargan, Amberley, hardback, 2013, 160 pp. ISBN 9781445614038The tercentenary of the accession of George 1 in 2014 has revived interest in the legacy of Georgian England, which includes extensive numbers of elegant Georgian houses throughout the British Isles, which Pat Dargan contends in this attractively...