Genre: History

Review – The Dead of Winter

Posted December 15, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Dead of Winter

The Dead of Winter: The Demons, Witches and Ghosts of Christmas

by Sarah Clegg

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 208
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

As winter comes and the hours of darkness overtake the light, we seek out warmth, good food, and good company. But beneath the jollity and bright enchantment of the festive season, there lurks a darker mood - one that has found expression over the centuries in a host of strange and unsettling traditions and lore.

Here, Sarah Clegg takes us on a journey through midwinter to explore the lesser-known Christmas traditions, from English mummers plays and Austrian Krampus runs, to modern pagan rituals at Stonehenge and the night in Finland when a young girl is crowned with candles as St Lucy - a martyred Christian girl who also appears as a witch leading a procession of the dead. At wassails and hoodenings and winter gatherings, attended by ghastly, grinning horses, snatching monsters and mysterious visitors, we discover how these traditions originated and how they changed through the centuries, and we ask ourselves: if we can't keep the darkness entirely at bay, might it be fun to let a little in?

If you’re more into Halloween than Christmas, Sarah Clegg’s The Dead of Winter might bring you some joy. It’s all about the ghosts, witches and monsters of Christmas: we’re not talking Dickens here, but the Mari Lwyd, Krampus, Perchta, the Wild Hunt, and seeing premonitions of your own death.

It’s a relatively short book, but seems pretty well researched, and there are sources listed after each chapter. (Unlike, say, Judith Flanders’ book on Christmas traditions, it at least spells “Mari Lwyd” correctly, and doesn’t pretend it’s exactly the same tradition as  the Klapperbock and similar.) Clegg discusses various customs and how they’re related, and also joyously participates in some of them herself. It’s fascinating how creepy she found some of them (and how well she described that sensation of fun-with-an-edge-of-unease) — definitely wouldn’t catch me doing some of these things!

The book could’ve done with some editing, however, at least in the ebook version: there were at least two sentences that had either no beginning or no ending. The format on Kindle is also kind of annoying, because you have to tap the footnote symbol to go to the footnotes page for that chapter, where all the footnotes are denoted by symbols. I’m not very visual, and it was maddening to try to tell myself what symbol I was looking for to read the corresponding footnote, only to be stymied by the fact that they’re not that visually distinct.

Still, the content was interesting!

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker

Posted December 13, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker

The Bookshop, the Draper, The Candlestick: A History of the High Street

by Annie Gray

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 416
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

What makes a high street? It's certainly not just about the shopping; these thoroughfares are often the beating heart of our towns and cities and, by extension, of the people who use them. As spaces where local life and culture unfolds, our high streets can be playgrounds of personal indulgence and community spirit, or sites of contentious debate and politicking.

Historian Annie Gray takes us down the street and through the ages, from medieval marketplaces to the purpose-built concrete precincts of the twentieth century. Peeping through the windows of tailors, tearooms and grocers, we explore everything from the toyshops of yesteryear - where curiosities were sold for adults, not children - to the birth of brands we shop at today.

Vibrant and enticing, The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker is an essential reflection on how we shopped and lived in days gone by - and what the future may bring.

It’s pretty well-established by this point that I love a book that does a deep-dive on a highly specific subject, so obviously I was very tempted by Annie Gray’s The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker, a history of the high street. It starts with a chapter about shopping prior to the 1650s, and then discusses some broad eras from there, with the conceit that we’re going shopping with a certain level of means and a certain shopping list.

I wasn’t always in love with that conceit, I must admit; I wanted less about how “probably you’re quite tired by now and could do with a pick-me-up”, and more just facts. I get other people find that dry and boring, but I find the imaginative flourishes often just act like padding, and obscure the information that you’re reading for. I wonder if another format might’ve worked better, like chapters themed around types of shops (drapers, for instance) or a type of shopping (confectionary, menswear, etc) in order to really highlight how that changes over time.

Regardless, I did find this really fascinating, and it was interesting to reflect on my own experiences of high streets. Cardiff’s is definitely still alive, for instance, and apparently got the top spot in a consumer survey very recently. But where I grew up in Wakefield feels a bit more lacklustre, in part because of the semi-recent Trinity Shopping Centre built a few streets away, obviously designed to draw the life of the town there.

Annie Gray has a surprising optimism about the future of the high street. Certainly I’ve found myself both using my local high street more, coincidentally about the time I started reading this (grabbing stuff from Boots and Superdrug rather than online, for instance, and heading to a local bike shop instead of Halfords when I needed bike accessories), and being frustrated by the shops that have closed and gone away (I’d have patronised an M&S in person if they hadn’t moved to a spot outside of town). As someone returning to cycling, the local high street (such as it is) is somehow a lot more tempting now, especially with the library now sited much closer to it.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Book at War

Posted December 3, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Book at War

The Book at War

by Andrew Pettegree

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 480
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline. In The Book at War, acclaimed historian Andrew Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture - from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank - has shaped, and been shaped, by the conflicts of the modern age. From the American Civil War to the invasion of Ukraine, books, authors and readers have gone to war - and in the process become both deadly weapons and our most persuasive arguments for peace.

Andrew Pettegree’s The Book at War delves into how books, libraries, and literacy more generally have been used in war, in various contexts. There’s a lot to say about the World Wars, and particularly World War II, but the book doesn’t start there or finish there. It begins, in fact, by discussing military education and the kind of libraries provided for the teaching of future officers (often heavy on the classics).

I found it overall a bit slower than I’d hoped, and sometimes more prone to explaining what was happening exactly in the wars discussed; that makes sense, of course, to give people context — but at the same time, some of it felt fairly tangential to the topic of “libraries and readers in an age of conflict” (the subtitle of the book). Sometimes the topic is interpreted very broadly, as when it discussed the leaflets dropped in various efforts with propaganda. Sure, some people read those, but it didn’t feel very related to libraries.

I knew a surprising amount of the information here, in the end, but it was still interesting to reflect on the role of libraries and librarians specifically, and how often they have been collaborators with pretty much whatever the people in power wanted. We often thinks of books and reading as very liberal, but this book gives the lie to that (so do some of the book blogs I see around, to be fair; yeesh!).

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The British Museum

Posted November 24, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – The British Museum

The British Museum: Storehouse of Civilizations

by James Hamilton

Genres: History
Pages: 224
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

James Hamilton explores the establishment of the Museum in the 1750s (from the bequest to the nation of the collections of Sir Hans Sloane); the chosen site of its location; the cultural context in which it came into being; the subsequent development, expansion and diversification of the Museum, both as a collection and as a building, from the early 19th to the 21st century; the controversy occasioned by some of its acquisitions; and the legacy and influence of the Museum nationally and globally.

A product and symbol of the 18th-century Enlightenment, the British Museum is as iconic an expression of that cultural tendency as Johnson's Dictionary, the French Encyclopedie and Linnaean plant classification. Its collections embody the raw material of empiricism - the bringing together of things to enable the widest intellectual experiment to take place.

A concise history of one of the world's greatest and most comprehensive museum collections, from its founding in 1753.

James Hamilton’s The British Museum: Storehouse of Civilizations definitely isn’t the place to go for a critique of the British Museum’s collection practices. It does briefly mention some of the controversies, but mostly it’s a paean to the vision of the whole endeavour, fascinated with how the institution has developed.

And… to be fair, I found it equally fascinating: I didn’t expect to be so interested in the phases of building of the museum, but it really tracks with the way the collections increased, the splitting off of various things like the Natural History Museum and eventually the British Library. Hamilton manages to avoid it sounding too dry, and there are lots of colour photographs and additions which add well to the text (even if I don’t, personally, usually find them very enlightening).

A surprisingly quick read overall, and fascinating. It explicitly discusses (and reproduces) some of the founding tenets and principles, including the ones which are cited in arguments about refusing to return objects etc, so it’s also an interesting primer for discussion of repatriation and decolonisation, even if Hamilton doesn’t dig into that in this book.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Plants: From Roots to Riches

Posted November 7, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Plants: From Roots to Riches

Plants: From Roots to Riches

by Kathy Willis, Carolyn Fry

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 368
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Our obsession with plants and gardening goes back a long way and Plants: From Roots to Riches takes us to where it all began. Taking a journey through the scientific life of a uniquely British institution across 25 vivid chapters, this book explores how the last 250 years have transformed our relationship with plants for good.

Based on Radio 4’s landmark series, Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Carolyn Fry, the acclaimed science writer, will take us from the birth of modern botany right through to the modern day. Delving into Kew’s archive and its world-class collections – including the Herbarium with over 7.5 million preserved plant specimens – they start with Carl Linnaeus and his invention of a universal language to name plants, through Joseph Banks’ exotic discoveries and how Charles Darwin’s fascination with orchids helped convince doubters about evolution. And as the British Empire painted the atlas red, explorers, adventurers and scientists risked their lives to bring the most interesting plant specimens and information back to London, and to Kew. From the lucrative races to control rubber, quinine and coffee to understanding the causes of the potato famine, the science of plants has taught us fascinating and enormously valuable lessons.

Full of amazing images from the archives, (some never reproduced before) and packed with history, science, memorable tales of adventure and discovery, politics and conflict, changing economic and social preoccupations, each chapter tells a unique and fascinating story, but, gathered together, a great picture unfolds, of the development of a most remarkable science, the magic and beauty of plants and ultimately our dependency on them.

Plants: From Roots to Riches is based on a series that was on Radio 4, written by Kathy Willis and Carolyn Fry. I never caught the radio version, but the book version is well-organised into a bunch of pretty bitesize chapters, following the development of botany as a modern science through the lens of Kew Gardens. It has some illustrations, though the colour plates seem quite muted and faded (not sure if this was always so or whether it was the age of the book — it’s a library book).

I don’t think it goes into enormous depth, so if this is your pet topic then likely there isn’t much new for you here, but it was an enjoyable read for me. The focus on Kew and the part Kew has played in the development of botany helped to focus things, and because of the various characters that have been historically involved with Kew, added a bit of human interest too (though none of them seem totally eccentric, alas).

It was a surprisingly fast read, I think because it is basically skimming the surface in a radio-friendly way. I learned some things, but nothing that terribly surprised me.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Real Valkyrie

Posted November 1, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – The Real Valkyrie

The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women

by Nancy Marie Brown

Genres: Historical Fiction, History, Non-fiction
Pages: 336
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

In 2017, DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka, Sweden, was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together archaeology, history and literature to reinvent her life and times, showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined. Nancy Marie Brown links the Birka warrior, whom she names Hervor, to Viking trading towns and to their great trade route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines Hervor’s adventures intersecting with larger-than-life but real women, including Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings, the Viking leader known as the Red Girl, and Queen Olga of Kyiv. Hervor’s short, dramatic life shows that much of what we have taken as truth about women in the Viking Age is based not on data but on nineteenth-century Victorian biases. Rather than holding the household keys, Viking women in history, the sagas, poetry and myth carry weapons. In this compelling narrative, Brown brings the world of those valkyries and shield-maids to vivid life.

This is a much-belated post for a book I read and reviewed a while ago, and realised I never reviewed here. My memory of the book’s contents isn’t the sharpest now, but I can try, if anyone has questions!

The Real Valkyrie is about 40% fiction by volume, which is not entirely what I expected. The author has chosen to name and give a fictional biography to the Viking warrior found in Birka who was, after DNA testing, proven to be a woman. The author names her Hervor, and vividly reimagines her life using a mixture of information gained from archaeology and information gained by reading the sagas that have been recorded and handed down.

It’s well-known that the sagas contain quite a lot of truthful detail and history, e.g. in making it clear that Vikings went as far as the Americas in their voyaging, and Brown makes the very good point that the number of female warriors in them probably doesn’t reflect pure fantasy either. I think she’s at her most interesting while discussing the sagas, to be honest: her fictional biography of Hervor made her lose sight of how little she actually could say about the real warrior, and she kept believing far too much in her own story. (The Birka warrior and Ragnhild probably never met, so that’s why they didn’t stay friends…)

It’s an interesting reconstruction, but I’d have preferred to stay focused on the facts (even including those picked from sagas).

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Precious

Posted October 20, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Precious

Precious: The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time

by Helen Molesworth

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 316
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Travelling through moments in history and layers of soil and sediment, this is world history as you have never seen it before.

This is the story of precious gems, from emeralds and rubies, to sapphires and pearls. Explore their history and geology, as well as their famous owners, from Elizabeth 1 to Elizabeth Taylor, Marie Antoinette to Marilyn Monroe, Coco Chanel to Beyonce.

Discover the fragile emerald watch that survived cross-continental journeys and centuries under the floorboards of a London house.

Journey back through the generations of women who wore pearls as a signifier of femininity and marvel at the role these glistening objects have played in changing depictions of feminism.

Learn of the Burmese warriors who believed so strongly in the connection between rubies and lifeblood that they embedded them into their skin before battle to protect them from harm.

In this sumptuous and sweeping history of humanity's love affair with jewels, the V&A’s Senior Jewellery Curator, Helen Molesworth, takes you behind the curtain of museums and auction houses, showcasing some of history's most incredible and iconic jewels and the deeply human stories that lie behind them.

Helen Molesworth obviously loves jewels, and discusses some of the very famous ones she’s had the chance to handle during her career in Precious: The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time. While ostensibly a history of gemstones, it’s also quite personal, with Molesworth discussing her connection to the gems or places where gems are mined, and making her experience quite clear. She’s handled So-And-So’s very famous jewels, you know! And these ones too!

I wasn’t so interested in her autobiography through gems, but where she does discuss the formation of gems and the history of how we’ve seen and used gems, it is interesting. And it’s not that I necessarily dislike someone having a personal connection to the topics they write about, and learning from someone’s experience can be interesting — it just feels like there’s a lot of namedropping, both of famous people and famous gems.

It was definitely a more satisfying read than Lapidarium (Hettie Judah) and went a bit more in depth. I found it compelling enough to read it quite quickly — really, it’s mostly in retrospect I’m rolling my eyes a little at the namedropping.

One good feature is the two sets of colour pages showing off photos of the gems. That helps, as I’ve never been that interested, and thus hadn’t seen some of the famous pieces described before. It gives a bit of context.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Miniature Library of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House

Posted October 13, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Miniature Library of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House

The Miniature Library of Queen Mary's Dolls' House

by Elizabeth Clark Ashby

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 160
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A unique look inside the carefully crafted miniature library of the Queen Mary's Dolls' House.

Created between 1921 and 1924, the Queen Mary's Dolls' House is one of the most beautiful and famous dollhouses in the world. The structure was designed by British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and features the craftsmanship of over one thousand artists. The house was meticulously furnished, meant to serve as a representation of a real royal residence. It features electricity, running water, and working elevators, but perhaps most impressive of all is the house's spellbinding Edwardian library, which includes more than three hundred miniature books, curated by the granddaughter of Queen Victoria Princess Marie Louise and the writer E.V. Lucas, who contacted hundreds of renowned authors to solicit original works. From poetry by Thomas Hardy to stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and gardening books to atlases, these works represent British aristocratic life and the best examples of art and literature of the time.

The Miniature Library of Queen Mary's Dolls' House is accompanied by a Foreword by Her Majesty Queen Camilla, making it the premiere guidebook to the Crown's miniature royal residence.

The title of Elizabeth Clark Ashby’s book is a pretty good guide to the contents: The Miniature Library of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House — though the book does also include some discussion of other aspects of the dolls’ house, such as the (working) miniature pianos and the decision not to include dolls, those aspects are brief. Mostly it focuses on the books: who wrote in them, how were they chosen, what did they write, and how were the books bound.

There’s some interesting discussion (though brief) of why particular people accepted or declined, and the whole thing is illustrated with colour photographs of many of the small books, including with them carefully opened to show some of the pages.

It’s a pretty enchanting idea, though a part of me wonders what the point is when it’s all “look and don’t touch”. If nobody ever opens the books to read these stories, was there really any point in making such lovely objects, except to demonstrate devotion to the monarchy requesting it? I don’t know.

As an endeavour, though, it’s really cool, and this book is a good tour of the little library and how it came to be.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Around the Ocean in 80 Fish and Other Sea Life

Posted September 23, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – Around the Ocean in 80 Fish and Other Sea Life

Around the Ocean in 80 Fish & Other Sea Life

by Helen Scales, Marcel George

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 216
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

This is an inspiring tour of the world's oceans and 80 of its most notable inhabitants. Beautifully illustrated, the book includes fascinating stories of the fish, shellfish and other sea life that have somehow impacted human life - whether in our medicine, culture or folklore - in often surprising and unexpected ways.

Around the Ocean in 80 Fish and Other Sea Life is in the same format as Jonathan Drori’s books about plants and trees, but has a different author (Helen Scales) and a different artist (Marcel George). Ocean life isn’t entirely my thing, but nor are plants and trees: what matters is the enthusiasm of the author — and in this case, the beautiful illustrations, which aren’t always just of the animal in question, but an interpretation of how humans have interacted with it or legends around it.

The amount of life in the ocean is so immensely rich that you could miss out everybody’s favourites and still have 80 creatures, so it’s hard to say whether the choices are right or wrong, though my prediction is that almost everyone will have a question about some preferred animal that has been neglected. Scales includes some striking stories and some very curious creatures, and the illustrations are (as I expected from this series) really beautiful. There’s no overarching narrative here — one could dip in and out easily, turn to random pages, etc, etc. I read it cover to cover in that order, as is my wont.

As ever, it highlights the effects humans are having on marine life. Many of the creatures discussed are endangered, or have at the very least had their environment affected by humans in some way or another. Scales doesn’t linger on it to a depressing extent, especially as each segment is so short, but it’s unavoidable to notice it in the aggregate.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Moneta

Posted September 16, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Moneta

Moneta: A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins

by Gareth Harney

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 384
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

The extraordinary story of ancient Rome, history's greatest superpower, as told through humankind's most universal object: the coin.

Moneta traces ancient Rome's unstoppable rise, from a few huts on an Italian hilltop to an all-conquering empire spanning three continents, through the fascinating lives of twelve remarkable coins. In these handcrafted pieces of ancient art we witness Caesar's bloody assassination, follow the legions to the edge of the known world, take a seat in the packed Colosseum, and ultimately, watch as barbarian armies mass at the gates.

The Romans saw coins as far more than just money - these were metal canvases on which they immortalised their sacred gods, mighty emperors, towering monuments, and brutal battles of conquest. Revealed in those intricate designs struck in gold, silver, and bronze was the epic history of the Roman world.

Hold the glory and the infamy of ancient Rome in the palm of your hand.

I picked up Gareth Harney’s Moneta on a bit of a whim, and partly because it had Emma Southon’s endorsement on the cover, and I’ve really enjoyed her books. And indeed, Moneta is just as readable as Southon’s work, and I found it surprisingly engaging: coins in and of themselves aren’t that interesting to me, but using an object to interrogate a wider history is great.

One quibble, I suppose, inasfar as it matters, is that it’s not really just twelve coins. Each chapter mentions plenty of other coins. And I’d have loved more images of the coins, close to where they get discussed in the text — I’m no good at imagining what’s not in front of me, since I have no visual imagination at all.

Still, I found it a really engaging read. I’m not usually a fan of imaginative reconstructions, but Harney has a knack of storytelling that made them interesting (though of course one should take them with several pinches of salt). The coins and scenarios he chooses to highlight are fascinating, and worthwhile in understanding the Roman Empire.

I guess the ultimate accolade is that even though it’s non-fiction, I found it pretty unputdownable.

Rating: 4/5

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