Tommy Armstrong; The Pitman Poet, Ray Tilly (Summerhill Books, Newcastle upon Tyne, (2010) 192pp., paperback, £9.99 ISBN 978 1 906721 30 5.This biography of Thomas Armstrong (1848-1920) the Pitman Poet of Tanfield Lea is by his detective grandson Ray Tilly who helps to dispel misconceptions about his father William Hunter...

Property and Virginity; The Christianization of Marriage in Medieval Iceland 1200-1600, Agnes S. Arnorsdottir (Aarhus University Press, Denmark, 2010) 533pp., hardback, £50.00, ISBN 978 8 7934 513 3This is a groundbreaking special study.  Christianity changed the culture of society in Iceland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as it did...

The Medieval Traveller, Norbert Ohler, translated by Caroline Hillier (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge and New York, 2010, first published in German 1986, English translation 1989, this is a new edition) xv, 296pp., paperback, £19.99, $37.00, ISBN 978 1 84383507 3This classic study reminds us that where formerly it was believed...

A History of Britain: The Normans, Magna Carta and the Black Death, E. H. Carter and R.A.F. Mears, ed. David Evans, (Stacey International, London, 2010, original edition, Clarendon Press, 1937)  296pp., hardback £10.00, ISBN 978 1 906768 36 2 This long admired but latterly forgotten series was written by Carter,...

Pashas: Traders and Travellers in the Islamic World.James Mather. Yale University Press. 2011, 302p. ISBN: 978-0-300-12639-6. £12.99At a time when much attention is focussed on events in the Arab world, the issuing of James Mather's 2009 book in paperback format is very appropriate. He deals with the neglected history of...

Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder and Terror in the Cold War Caribbean, Alex von Tunzelmann, Simon and Shuster, 2011, 505p, ISBN 978-1-84737-450-9, £25-00.For those of us who remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and indeed who have vivid memories of the wider Cold War power politics of the 1950s and 1960s, Alex...

First Russia, then Tibet; Travels through a Changing World, Robert Byron (I. B. Tauris, 2011, first published by Macmillan 1933) 254pp., paperback, £17.99 ISBN 978 1 84885 424 6.Robert Byron was tragically killed at the age of 35 in 1941 when the ship he was in was torpedoed.  He was...

Race to the South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen, Roland Huntford (Continuum, London and New York, 2110) xxii, 330pp., hardback, £20, ISBN 978 1 4411 698272.This must be the modern history bargain of the year.  A century ago in 1910, two ships left for Antarctica, the Terra...

The New Ways of History: Developments in Historiography - Gelina Harlaftis, Nikos Karapidakis, Kostas Sbonias and Vaios Vaiopoulos, (eds.),(I.B. Tauris), 2010  260pp., £56.50, hard, ISBN 978-1-84885-126-9. Making sense of the past is always a challenge for historians; some might argue a fruitless task. In a world where people's actions are...

Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions - H. Munro Chadwick (Cambridge Literary Collection, Cambridge University Press), 2010 422pp., £21.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-108-01005-4 Why bother to review a book that was originally published in 1905 and some of whose conclusions have been questioned by later historians?  The answer is simple: it's a very...

The End of Byzantium - Jonathan Harris (Yale University Press), 2010 298pp., £25, hard, IDBN 978-0-300-11786-8That the modern world begins with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 as the Muslim hordes battled their way into Europe was a widely accepted position when I was in school.  In fact, the Ottoman...

Richard III and the Bosworth Campaign - Peter Hammond (Pen & Sword Books Ltd.), 2010 192pp., £19.99, hard, ISBN 978-1-8441-5259-6There remains intense popular interest in Richard III.  In one sense, this is surprising since he was king for only two years and was the last English king to die in...

A Passion for History: Conversations with Denis Crouzet - Natalie Zemon Davis(Truman State University Press), 2010 218pp., $24.95, paper, ISBN 978-1-931112-97-0Natalie Zemon Davis is one of the leading historians of early modern society and culture perhaps best known for her classic The Return of Martin Guerre.  Her work is innovative...

Norman England 1066-1204, Trevor Rowley (Shire Living Histories, Oxford and New York, 2010) 80pp., paperback, £8.99, U.S. $15.95, CAN $17.95, ISBN 978 0 74780 800 6. This is a modest but useful contribution to the literature on Norman England.  It is No. 8 in the Shire Histories which aim to...

Galileo: Watcher of the Skies, David Wootton (Yale University Press, 2010, London and New Haven) xii, 328pp., hardback £25, ISBN 978 0 300 125 368This is a ground-breaking work by David Wootton, Anniversary Professor of History at York.  It provides convincing evidence that Galileo (1564-1642) was a Copernican earlier than...

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,...

Bible; The Story of the King James Version, 1611-2011, Gordon Campbell (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2010)xiii, 354pp., hardback, £16.99, US $24.95, ISBN 978 0 19 955759 2. In 1604 King James convened a conference to discuss the grievances of Puritans within the Church of England.  On the...

Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Early Modern Mediterranean; Brandel's Maritime Legacy, edited by Maria Fusaro, Colin Heywood and Mohamed-Salah Omri (I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2010) xiv, 319pp., hardback, £54.50 ISBN 978 1 84885 163 4. Fernand Brandel's original French study of ‘The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean...

Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, edited by David Clark and Nicholas Perkins (B. S. Brewer, Cambridge, Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge and New York, 2010) xiv, 283pp., hardback, £55, US $105, ISBN 978 I 84384 2514.This is a volume in the series Medievalism, which claims to cater for monographs and...

A Short History of Atheism, Gavin Hyman (I. B. Taurus, London and New York, 2010) xx, 212pp., paperback, £14.99, ISBN 978 1 84885 137 5, hardback, £49.50, ISBN 978 1 84885 136 8.Gavin Hyman, Lecturer in Religious Studies at Lancaster and a contributor to the Cambridge Companion to Atheism (2006),...