Author Robert Harris has returned with the tale of the hunting of Colonels Edward Whalley and William Goffe as they flee the retribution of King Charles II.
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To see in the dark and to hit their target was the challenge Bomber Command faced in the Second World War. To see in the dark and stay hidden only complicated matters more. In Will Iredale latest book, The Pathfinders, he paints a vivid of the force set up to guide Bomber Command’s squadrons to their targets in Occupied Europe. The Pathfinders is a superior narrative history that pays the respect that is due and to the price that was paid.
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After 15 years of adventures, Bernard Cornwell finally allows Uhtred of Bebbanburg to hang up Serpent-Breath. Of course, before Uhtred can finally do that, he is dragged into one final confrontation that will see Alfred’s dream realised on the bloody field of Bebbanburg.
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In this time of heightened everything, how our disagreements will be viewed those who follow us is the last thing on the mind of those who hate-tweet their every thought. Will those in the future will undoubtedly look at us and wonder “what on earth was going on?” This is the premise of Chris Beckett’s latest work, Two Tribes.
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Growing up in Western Canada, Bigfoot stories are always about and as a child, you were happy you had the Rockies between Calgary and ‘them’. And then came Harry and the Hendersons to make everything ok. Max Brooks’ latest journey into the things of our nightmares, Devolution, is not Harry. In any way.
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The story of the Falklands War has quickly become a part of the British mythos. A hastily thrown together Task Force, with two small carriers and twenty even smaller fighters taking on the might of the Argentine Air Force and Navy. It was a close-run thing. In Rowland White’s latest book, Harrier 809, he returns to two of his previous subjects, the Falklands and 809 Naval Air Squadron, and shows us that things really were, at times, upon a wing and a prayer.
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Between the wars, motor racing came of age. From a pastime of the wealthy, national prestige came to the fore with the arrival of the Nazi backed Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz teams. The two teams would dominate Grand Prix racing before the return of war. For any driver with dreams of winning, these seats were the only ones to aspire too. Richard Williams has turned his gaze upon the mostly forgotten Dick Seaman and his remarkable, fateful, journey to the top step of the podium.
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Uthred of Bebbanburg returns for his 12th adventure in Bernard Cornwell’s latest novel, Sword of Kings. Uthred is goaded into returning south to rescue a queen and make a King. Yet Uthred is not getting any younger and the return to London prompts our ageing hero to consider that his days in the shield wall may be coming to an end.
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In September 1944, 10,000 airborne soldiers were dropped 64 miles behind the German lines and were required to hold the vital bridges at Arnhem. What would happen would go down in legend. Iain Ballantyne crafts a breathless look at the men on the ground and the civilians who found the war entering every room in their homes.
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D-Day can tend to be remembered by the beaches, the bocage and the Tigers. In his new history of the Normandy campaign, James Holland looks at the myths of the campaign and reminds us that without the incredible logistics machine supporting the tip of the spear, the liberation would never have gotten very far inland at all.
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In Marina Amaral and Dan Jones’ The Colour of Time, we have two historians bringing the colour back to our history, one which we have become so used to seeing in monochrome. The subtle and powerful marriage of the images and text brings an excitement to each turn of the page that makes this a very special book.
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The submarine is one of man’s greatest, and most deadly, inventions. In The Deadly Trade: The Complete History of Submarine Warfare from Archimedes to the Present, Iain Ballantyne takes us from the theory of the underwater warship, through Jules Vern to the U-Boot and today’s Intercontinental Ballistic Submarine. Where Ballantyne’s superior work excels is to look at the development of the submarine through the eyes of the men who took them to war and who, mostly, never came home.
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2017 is almost done, but it hasn't been all bad, right? In this post, I look back at the things I've loved and discovered in 2017. I look at Books, Films and Podcasts as these are the things that have taken up most of my free time. Hope you like it.
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With A Legacy of Spies, John le Carre returns to the scene of the novel that put him on the map. While the much publicised return of George Smiley is making the headlines, the story is set upon the shoulders, in my opinion, of one of his most interesting characters, Smiley’s right hand, Peter Guillam.
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The men and women who resisted Hitler have been cast as heroes and villains of both the left and right. The conspirators and their actions have been remembered in black and white, with the viewer choosing the colours with which to paint them. In Danny Orbach’s new history of the resistance, The Plots Against Hitler, he very convincingly shows us that rather than pure saints or sinners, the complexity and contradictions of the conspirators makes them that most difficult of things to digest, human.
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Superheroes are funny old things. I remember when reading a comic would get you ridiculed in the playground and possibly duffed up a bit. Especially if it was one of those American comics, you usually could get away with 2000AD because, well, Dredd. But these days, thanks to the movies and the rise to power of The Geek, comics are cool and Superheroes are big bank. The films and books we get these days try, to a greater or lesser extent, to ground their characters in a sense of reality. Gone are radioactive spider bites or gamma rays, in are gene splicing and good old evolution.
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Cocktails are a wonderful, delightful and subjective thing. The latest addition to the the ever increasing library of Cocktail tales is Emma "Gin Monkey" Stokes' scientific look at drinking. The science may be beyond me, but the book and its take on the cocktail reference genre is an impressive, even if she does spoils some Castia-specific secrets.
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We live in a world where our focus is constantly drawn East. We see terrible things happen, our leaders contemplate doing terrible things and dropping equally terrible things in response. We look at what we call the Middle East as a modern problem, as if our focus has only recently turned to it. But, living in the West we forget that everything has come from the East. While Rome was falling, the East was flourishing. Before we worried about oil and gas, we sent gold and silver East for silks and knowledge. We owe everything to the East. And yet, with our minds firmly on our own importance, we tend to think of it as a dusty backwater. The Silk Road, to modern minds, is a website on that bit of the internet you can't find when you pop it into Google.
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We live in an age where an artist's "Reienvention" is hailed as something special, something remarkable. Every time Lady Gaga appears in a new frock, the media goes nuts, because, that is what their readers expect. The thing is, Madonna did it before and David Bowie did it better than all but one, the man who never really reinvented himself, but was always there, Frank Sinatra. To my generation, he was "Old People's Music". We knew Nancy from the constant reworking of "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and kids today probably know Frank Sinatra Jr better for his appearances on Family Guy better than they have ever known his dad. But through all the static and preconceived ideas, the music, THAT voice, still moves us and causes us to remember.
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Looking back to the misty days of my schooling, Rome was one of those highlights of history lessons that appeal to teen aged boys. The period has everything you could want to distract you from the fact that you are actually learning. Rome, two millennia on, still thrills, delights, repulses and titillates like no other that has come since. One thing that does slip from mind usually that the line of Julies Caesar only lasted until 69 CE, yet produced the Emperors that most spring to mind. A decade after he crossed the Rubicon, Tom Holland (Historian, cricketer and not Spiderman) has returned to Rome to tell us the story of the men and remarkably formidable women that took up Caesar's mantle and finished the dismantling of The Republic.
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