Spies by Calder Walton – The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West – is a timely book, well worth reading. It shows an incredible history of spying, between US, UK, russia, and more recently, China. While the history covers about 100 years, the cold…
Oxford University by Alice Blackford Millea is fascinating. It has 52 stories from the archives of Oxford, which spans over 800 years. Even though the archives were established at the same time with the Bodleian, in 1634, there area documents that precede this period and…
The volunteer by Jack Fairweather – One man, an underground army, and the secret mission to destroy Auschwitz – is the story of Witold Pilecki. In the summer of 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, Witold Pilecki volunteered to go undercover in what was…
The Making of Mămăligă by Alex Drace-Francis – Transimperial Recipes for a Romanian National Dish – is a fascinating book. Mămăligă is polenta, while mălai is corn meal. This is a cereal that was brought over to Europe from America. It is interesting to see…
Invasion by Luke Harding – Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival – is a well written and worth reading book. It is on the 2023 Political Writing Book prize short list by The Orwell Foundation. The book is mostly descriptive, each chapter touching…
Liverpool by Peter Aughton – A People’s History – was a book I borrowed for an essay and ended up keeping it so I could read it cover to cover. It is a very good book and I think it would appeal to a wider…
Confinement by Jessica Cox* – The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain – is such an interesting book. I’ve read about sexuality in Victorian Britain, but this book is dedicated to childbirth. The author is a mother of three, and she makes a…
The Brunels by Anthony Burton – father and son – is a good book. It covers a bit of their personal lives and more in depth their professional life. I wish there was a bit more about the interactions between them, thus I gave the…
Killer in the Kremlin by John Sweeney – The Explosive Account of Putin’s Reign of Terror – is very different from the We Need to Talk About Putin by Mark Galeotti I reviewed recently. That one has looking at Putin’s imagine in the west. The…
Mortal Monarchs by Suzie Edge – 1000 Years of Royal Deaths – was such a disappointment. I only gave it 1 star! The book is about how the monarchs died, written by a medical historian. Her background as a medical doctor made me very excited.…
Dancing for Stalin by Christina Ezrahi – A True Story of Extraordinary Courage and Survival in the Soviet Gulag – was a book I was very keen to read. The book is about Nina Anisimova, born in 1909 in St Petersburg, who was a classical…
The University of Oxford by Laurence Brockliss – A Brief History is a short, less than 150 pages book with lots of pictures. He also wrote a history that has 871 pages, which must be very interesting indeed. This brief history is so well written,…
Creating Spaniards by Sandie Holguín – Culture and National Identity in Republican Spain – is an over 20 years old book, but so worth reading. It was recommended to me by my teacher and I’m so glad he mentioned it, as I enjoyed it very…
A History of the Baltic States by Andres Kasekamp is a very short book considering it reveals the history of 3 countries: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. With only 200 pages on the topic as the rest are notes and so on, the material is very…
An Anti-Communist on the Eastern Front by Vladímir Kovalevski* is a must read! I loved this book for so many reasons. First of all it offers one of the most unusual perspectives of WWII and a bit of the Spanish civil war. It was written…
The Ingenious Victorians by John Wade – Weird and Wonderful Ideas from the Age of Innovation is such a good book. I loved everything about it, the stories, the drawings, especially as they are intertwined with the text and so many of them, offering a…