20th Century
Book Review
Book Review
Book review: Proto: how one ancient language went global, by Laura Spinney
Who are we, and where did we come from? Might our ancestral languages hold the key? More years ago than I care to remember, as a teenager I came upon an old book published in [more…]
20th Century
Book review: Fearless on Everest, by Julie Summers
‘Sandy Irvine sat outside his tent, shoulders hunched, his hat pulled down over his ears, his scarf shielding his badly sunburned face. His skin had been severely blistered by the sun, and the wind on [more…]
Biography
Review: Shaman of the Radical Right: The life and mind of Jonathan Bowden
Bowden was born in 1962 and died in March 2012 from a heart attack. I came across Jonathan Bowden’s work sometime in 2020. It was on YouTube and featured a small portly gentleman covering what [more…]
Book Review
Book Review: Minifigure Monarchs: A History of Great Brits in little bricks
Written by Andrew Redfern, and launched as a Kickstarter project in July 2025, Minifigure Monarchs was successfully funded within 24 hours. At 336 pages this hardback was a definite addition to my Christmas list! It’s [more…]
Biography
Book Review: My Life With Rock N’ Roll People by Mike Nicholls
Swiss Bob kindly sent me a copy of this book to review – so here you go. I had expected the book to be a series of articles that Nicholls had previously published in the [more…]
16th Century
Tracy Borman: Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I
It is always a bonus when a book takes one or more well-known figures and makes you see them in an entirely new light. Tracy Borman has achieved just this with her dual biography of [more…]
Book Review
Alanbrooke’s War Diaries edited by Arthur Bryant
I never really had a deep interest in WWII, my knowledge was sketchy and based on WWII films. Of course, I had imbibed that Hitler was the devil incarnate and Churchill was a national hero. [more…]
Book Review
Anger Is An Energy, by John Lydon
‘They put a hot wire to my head Cos of the things I did and said They made these feelings go away Model citizen in every way’ (From Anger Is An Energy, the song) Given [more…]