An elegant exploration of how British Prime Ministers, from Eden to Blair and beyond, have engaged in the Middle East under the misconception that they could help solve disputes because they... read more
This is likely to be one of the best of the many books we will see about the context and impact of Covid, from the great social historian of postwar Britain. (The eponymous 'duty of care' is... read more
The rise of Suleyman the Magnificent is told with a clever balance of the close (viziers, lovers, military commanders) and the distant (Venice, popes, emperors, Christendom and its interneci... read more
The Gibson family of the Scilly Isles photographed shipwrecks for four generations in the C19th and C20th - an extraordinary archive that is now held at the National Maritime Museum in Green... read more
From Byzantium to England, the Normans achieved an extraordinary ascendancy in the C11th. This study draws particular attention to dynastic relations and to the role of women in what has hit... read more
Incredible though it seems, in the closing years of the GDR the Stasi trained operatives to become poets in order to infiltrate literary circles. Years of sleuthing has yielded this remarkab... read more
We heard about Molotov's library in Rachel Polonsky's superb Molotov's Magic Lantern (£12.99). Now we have a portrait of Stalin through the books he read - and he was an avid reader all his... read more