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Bishops, in theory the central figures in the Anglo-Saxon Church, have received polarized, and sometimes unbalanced, treatment from its historians.
A new book on Henry VII is a major event. The last full-length study of the king and his reign, by S. B. Chrimes, was written in 1972, in a very different historiographical world. At that time, the explosion of interest in later-medieval history was still in its infancy, and the decades after 1485 were seen mainly through the lens of the 'Tudor Revolution in Government'.
On 17 May 1940, in a unique display of vulnerability and anguish, Neville Chamberlain confided to his sisters that his whole world had 'tumbled to bits in a moment' (p. 434). Clearly in shock from his 'tremendous reverse of fortunes' (p. 1), he lamented: 'There is no pleasure in life and no prospect of any' (p. 434).
This is a significant and provocative book about the early Quakers and their use of print in England from late 1652 to the end of 1656. It begins with an argument: 'Quakers were highly engaged with contemporary political and religious affairs, and were committed in very practical ways to the establishment of Christ's kingdom on earth' (p. 1).
The fate of Jews in post-war Europe is a subject which has been neglected by historians both in the West and in areas previously under Soviet control.
In this intellectually stimulating book Andrew C. Thompson criticises a realist interpretation of British foreign policy. His main argument runs that eighteenth-century foreign policy 'was not simply determined either by the desire for profit or territorial gain. It was part of a complex web of ideas that were intimately related to a broader political culture' (p. 2).
The subject of ‘film and history’ has come a long way since the publication of the pioneering The Historian and Film in 1976. In the 1970s historians were preoccupied with the value of film as a primary source for the study of contemporary history, for which reason much of the early work focused on newsreels and documentary films.