Defending the City of God: A Medieval Queen, the First Crusades, and the Quest for Peace in Jerusalem By Sharan Newman       Palgrave Macmillan In the twelfth century, Jerusalem was ruled by Queen Melisende, an indomitable figure who faced enemy armies, wily ambassadors, and ambitious bishops. The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem had only recently been established, created by the crusading armies …

The Bombers and The Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945 By Richard Overy Viking On the night of 27th July 1943, 729 RAF Bomber Command aircraft dropped 2,386 tons of bombs on the German city of Hamburg. The city’s shipbuilding industry meant that it was frequently a bombing target, but that night the majority of the bombs fell on …

A Spy In The Archives: A Memoir of Cold War Russia By Sheila Fitzpatrick I.B. Tauris Moscow, June 1968. A young Oxford doctoral student is outed as a spy in a Soviet newspaper. It could have been a devastating event for an ambitious young academic but, in a comic twist worthy of an Evelyn Waugh novel, the episode seems to …

As the centenary of the outbreak of World War I approaches, we will be encouraged to remember the fallen of a conflict that tore the world apart. Official commemorations, exhibitions, books and television series will echo the sequence of events a century ago. The bravery and heroism of soldiers who endured the trenches will be foremost in the public consciousness, …

The Great War Handbook: A Guide for Family Historians & Students of the Conflict By Geoff Bridger Pen & Sword  In 2014 a four-year commemoration will begin to mark the centenary of a conflict which changed the world forever, leaving more than 16 million dead. In many ways, World War I needs little introduction. It is familiar to us not …

Churchill and the King: The Wartime Alliance of Winston Churchill and George VI By Kenneth Weisbrode Viking In the spring of 1940, the Phoney War came to an abrupt end. Under the alarming assault of the Blitzkrieg offensive, Hitler’s army invaded Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in quick succession, and the countries of Western Europe fell with …