The Disappearance of Emile Zola: Love, Literature and the Dreyfus Case, Michael Rosen, 2017, Faber and Faber, 302p, £16-99. ISBN 978-0-571-31201-6 Emile Zola occupies a pivotal position in the world of personal integrity and courage. His intervention over the scandalous treatment of the Jewish French army officer, Captain Dreyfus, who...

Queen Victoria and the European Empires, John Van Der Kiste, Fonthill, 2016, hardback, £18.99, ISBN 9781781555507 John Van Der Kiste has published over forty books, a high proportion of which relate to individual and collective royal biography, in which he has developed considerable expertise, which is evident in his latest...

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...

The Nevills of Middleham. England’s Most Powerful Family in the Wars of the Roses, K.L. Clark, History Press, 2016, £19.99, hardback, ISBN 9780750963657 The Wars of the Roses are rarely studied in detail even in Lancashire and Yorkshire where probably more people today would be better acquainted with the current...

The Grand Old Duke of York. A Life of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, 1763-1827, Derek Winterbottom, Pen and Sword Books, Barnsley, 2016, hardback, £19.99, ISBN 9781473845770 This rehabilitation of the military career of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, with which we were all acquainted from...

The Secret Queen. Eleanor Talbot The Woman who put Richard III on the Throne, John Ashdown-Hill, The History Press, Stroud, 2016, paper, £9.99 ISBN 9780750968461 This revised edition of a book first published in 2009 and reissued in 2010, with an advertising alert on the front cover promising ‘New Evidence...

30-Second Ancient Greece, Matthew Nicholls, (ed.), Ivy Press, Lewes, 2016, hardback, £14.99, ISBN 9781782403883 This compact, strikingly designed, authoritative text by a team of authors under the leadership of Dr Matthew Nicholls, an ancient historian based at the University of Reading, sets out to distil the essence of the history...

The Making of a University. The Path to Higher Education in Huddersfield, John O’Connell, University of Huddersfield Press, 2016 ISBN 978-1-86218-054-3 John O’Connell’s eminently readable and characteristically trenchant survey of the foundations and development of the precursor institutions which became the University of Huddersfield from 1992 is essential reading for...

All for Freedom: a True Story of Escape from the Nazis, D. T. Davies [with Ioan Wyn Evans], Gomer Press, 2016, 160 p, £9-99. ISBN 978 1785621680. After the Second World War, David Davies worked successfully in the electrical installation business for over forty years and also became prominent in...

Beerhouses, Brothels and Bobbies. Policing by Consent in Huddersfield and the Huddersfield District in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, David Taylor, University of Huddersfield Press, 2016, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, e-mail enquiries university.press@hud.ac.uk David Taylor, author of a pioneering research monograph on the development of policing in Middlesbrough, c1840-1914,...

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882, Authoring History, second edition, Richard Brown, 2017, £20.37, paperback, ISBN 978-1540352231; Three Rebellions: Canada, South Wales and Australia, Authoring History, Richard Brown, second edition, 2016, £19.72, paperback, ISBN 978-1539455707 The opportunity to revise and update the original texts as both these publications move into their second...

The Frozen Chosen: the 1st Marine Division and the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, Osprey Publishing, 2016, £20, 296 pages, ISBN 978-1-4728-1436-4 The title of this excellent book doesn’t do it justice.  As well as chronicling the battles of the US 1st Marine Division in Korea in...

The Bride’s Trunk: A story of War and Reconciliation, Ingrid Dixon, Cloudshill Press, 2016, 219p, £7-99 [or £4-97 Kindle]. ISBN 978-9935080-2-8 A cornerstone of historical research is the identification of primary sources. Instinctively, most of the time, we think in terms of documentary sources, stretching back into past centuries. Every...

Stalin’s Englishman: the Lives of Guy Burgess by Andrew Lownie - Hodder and Stoughton, 2015. 432 pp, £9-99. ISBN 978-1-473-62738-3 Andrew Lownie has given us the first proper biography of Guy Burgess, the fruit of twenty years of meticulous research including over 100 interviews.  He has followed the traditional approach,...

Breaking the Habit: A Life of History, Richard Brown, Authoring History, 2016, 175 pp., £7.13 paper, ISBN 9781530295234 In this retrospective but far from introspective, autobiographical memoir Richard Brown muses ‘on the nature of History in an increasingly challenging environment’. The author, familiar to readers of online reviews on the...

The Kitchener Enigma. The Life and Death of Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, 1850-1916, Trevor Royle, The History Press, 2016, hardback, £25.00, pp. 416, ISBN 9780750967297 Trevor Royle’s bold, masterly, highly readable biography of one of the most recognisable faces or more specifically moustaches of the First World War, originally published...

Great Victorian Discoveries. Astounding Revelations and Misguided Assumptions, Caroline Rochford, Amberley, 2015, paperback, 287 pp., £9.99, ISBN 9781445645421 This sequel to the author’s well-received Great Victorian Inventions presents a cornucopia of ‘brilliant and bizarre’ examples of Victorian quests for knowledge of a world, which they dominated in so many other...

History of the Waterloo Campaign. The Classic Account of the Last Battle of the Napoleonic Wars, H.T. Siborne, Frontline Books, Barnsley, 2016, hardback, £25.00, pp. 584, ISBN 9781848329614 Military historians and a wider range of readers enticed by the blood and thunder exploits of Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe in the...

The Reformation in 100 Facts, Dr Kathleen Chater, Amberley, 2016, paperback, £7.99, 192 pp, ISBN 9781445651347 The year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s dramatic nailing of his 95 theses on indulgences denying the pope’s right to forgive sins on the church door at Wittenberg, which in itself...

Somme: 141 Days, 141 Lives, Alexandra Churchill and Andrew Holmes, The History Press, 2016, hardback, £25.00, 240 pp, ISBN 9780750965323 This deeply reflective, beautifully produced volume has been published to commemorate the centenary of the Battle of the Somme and focuses upon the experiences of 141 fallen casualties who over...