Live. Fight. Survive by Shaun Pinner – An ex-British soldier’s account of courage, resistance and defiance fighting for Ukraine against Russia – is a must read. I bought the book almost as it went out. It was only published 3 weeks ago. I was eager…
Stalin’s Apologist by S. J. Taylor – Walter Duranty: The New York Times’s Man in Moscow – is, in itself an apology to Duranty, which was rather unpleasant to read. It’s a dry book, the author talks about other people, and has the imperialistic views…
We Need to Talk About Putin by Mark Galeotti – Why the West Gets Him Wrong, and How to Get Him Right – is a good book. Very short, at under 150 pages, I think it is really worth reading. I decided to publish the…
Memoir of Kitty Wilkinson was published in 1927. Its name is: Memoir of Kitty Wilkinson of Liverpool, 1786-1860. With a short account of Thomas Wilkinson, her husband, edited by Herbert R. Rathbone. I talked about Kitty in another book I read recently, The Life And…
Charles and Ada by James Essinger – The Computer’s Most Passionate Partnership – was a book I wanted to read for a while and it was so disappointing when I finally got the chance to read it. Firstly, despite its name is mostly about Charles.…
I bought Queen of Our Times by Robert Hardman – The Life of Queen Elizabeth II – when I saw that Boris Johnson gave a copy of it as a gift to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a trip to Kyiv. Zelenskyy was so interested in the…
A Lady of Cotton by David Sekers – Hannah Greg, Mistress of Quarry Bank Mill – is such a wonderful biography. Sekers was a director of Quarry Bank Museum, which is a must-see in north of England, near Manchester. The mill still stands and still…
The Pioneering Life of Mary Wortley Montagu by Jo Willett* – Scientist and Feminist – is a must read. Most of us know about Jenner, especially after all the talk and the publicity the Jenner Institute had in the last year, with its development of…
Agent Sonya by Ben Macintyre – Lover, Mother, Soldier, Spy sounded like a very interesting book. The blurb mentions: “In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy English Cotswolds, a thin, elegant woman lived in a small cottage with her three children and her…
I received this book, Michael Schumacher by Pino Allievi – Immagini di una vita/A life in pictures, as a Christmas gift. I was delighted and I wanted to read the book in March, just before the new F1 season started. The season starts today and…
Dirty Bertie by Stephen Clarke – an English king made in France is the latest book by Stephen Clarke I read. You can see at the end of the post links to other reviews of his books. This one wasn’t as good as the others,…
The medical detective by Sandra Hempel – John Snow, cholera, and the mystery of the Broad Street pump is meant to be a biography of John Snow. It was published also by the University of California Press, making me assume that the work is academic.…
I bought Brunel by Steven Brindle – The Man Who Built the World – with an introduction by Dan Cruickshank from Brunel museum in London. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was one of the greatest minds of the 19th century. This short book tells his story, starting…
Josephine by Kate Williams – desire, ambition, Napoleon is a good book, very easy and pleasant to read, just like a novel. The only thing that annoyed me, so much that I took a star out of the rating was the amount of assumptions she…
Elizabeth I by Wallace MacCaffrey is an extensive biography. At over 400 pages, the book is not exactly short, but it does make for an easy read. He starts from her childhood and goes all over until her death. I made a lot of notes…
Elizabeth I by Christopher Haigh is the second book I read by him, first being English Reformations (see review linked at the end of the post). He says that this book is not a biography as it deals with different aspects of her reign, but…