Covering books and digital resources across all fields of history
Like us on FacebookFollow us on Twitter

ISSN 1749-8155

Browse all Reviews

Review Date: 
12 Feb 2015

Hosking’s book was widely anticipated. I had hoped that it would be a worthy successor to Adam Seligman’s The Problem of Trust.(1) However, it is largely a rambling discourse on concepts that are often barely connected to trust. There is no clear idea of what varieties of trust are. Many of Hosking’s claims are at variance with the evidence we have on trust.

Review Date: 
15 Jan 2015

In a time of prolific and revolutionary authors Hugh of Saint Victor lit up the 12th century with a particularly unique voice, combining an intense passion for teaching with a pragmatic and systematic mind. Out of his large body of work his Mystic Ark has always provided more questions than answers.

Review Date: 
8 Jan 2015

Have pity upon poor Andrew Melville. Once he was a towering figure in Presbyterian Scotland, John Knox’s successor as a leader of men, chastiser of proud monarchy and preacher of the truth. A student at St Andrews at the time of the Scottish Reformation, Melville spent a decade studying and teaching in France and Geneva.

Review Date: 
20 Nov 2014

Over years of supervising student dissertations I have been petitioned by many with a wish to undertake a study of gender (or more particularly women) and the Scottish Enlightenment. I usually caution against this. Gender relative to the Enlightenment is so very difficult to pin down. The Enlightenment, after all, wasn’t something that anyone knew they were doing or experiencing.

Review Date: 
6 Nov 2014

Demons or cunning priests?

‘The Pythia at Delphi, sitting with her petticoats bunched up and her arse on the Tripod, received her inspiration from below’. Denis Diderot

Review Date: 
30 Oct 2014

As Frevert says in introducing this volume, modern-day society is starting to pay increasing attention to emotions and how to manage or understand them. This collected volume reports how emotions have been documented historically in encyclopaedias and reference sources over the period 1700–2000.

Review Date: 
23 Oct 2014

Martin Hewitt’s study is a meticulously researched account of the mid-Victorian phase of the campaigns against press taxes.

Review Date: 
28 Aug 2014

Whilst first and foremost a literary scholar who focuses on the work of John Milton (1608–74), David Loewenstein has, in recent years, done much to undertake and encourage interdisciplinary research into the religio-political culture of early modern England.

Review Date: 
24 Jul 2014

This book achieves two aims: to locate the Great War in the history of the 20th century, and to show how, as the 20th century unfolded, our understanding of the meaning and significance of the Great War changed as well.

Review Date: 
26 Jun 2014

Having illuminated the production of polemical print to great effect in his first monograph, Politicians and Pamphleteers, Dr Peacey addresses its appropriation in his second, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution.

Pages