REVIEW BY RP To those who regularly stroll the streets of London, the churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor might be a familiar sight, even if the architect’s name is not. Perhaps overshadowed by contemporaries such as Sir Christopher Wren and Sir…
REVIEW BY RP The early medieval period is often thought of as a hotbed of violence. It is perhaps, then, a surprise to learn that only around 90 reported murders exist from five centuries of Anglo-Saxon England. Annie Whitehead’s book…
REVIEW BY ALISTAIR FAIR Simon Jenkins’ Short History of British Architecture ranges over several thousand years of cathedrals, castles, and grand buildings. Jenkins enjoys a good example and a memorable phrase. Inevitably in a survey, there is some unevenness, with…
REVIEW BY GARY LOCK The Baltinglass area has rightly been called ‘Ireland’s Hillfort Capital’ due to the 13 or so large enclosures on hilltops surrounding the modern town. The area has been intensively studied by a team from University College…
REVIEW BY CARLY HILTS Popular imaginings of the Viking Age are often dominated by larger-than life figures – kings, warlords, explorers, poets – with the experiences of ordinary men, women, and children fading anonymously into the background. This vibrant book…
REVIEW BY BRYAN R JUST Megan O’Neil’s Memory in Fragments provides a comprehensive and nuanced presentation of a topic the author has been exploring for years, namely the myriad ways the ancient Maya interacted with monumental sculptures over their long…
REVIEW BY MARIANNE HEM ERIKSEN Human sacrifice constitutes a perennially fascinating topic for scholars and general audiences alike. It is also a research area where the risk of leaning into sensationalism and exoticisation can be relatively high. In the Darkest…
REVIEW BY GRAHAM GOODLAD Nicholas Rodger began his monumental history of British sea power, tracing its development from Anglo-Saxon times to the end of the Second World War, almost three decades ago. The second volume, which took the story from…
REVIEW BY STEVE TIBBLE Writing a major new popular history about the Great Siege of Malta of 1565, in which the Knights Hospitaller – a Catholic military order – saw off a four-month assault by the Ottoman Empire, is no…
REVIEW BY ANDRÉ VAN LOON To start with what this book is not: Martin Sullivan, a lecturer in business and previously an investment banker, does not give us a straightforward biography of Louis-Nicolas Davout, Duke of Auerstädt and Prince of…
REVIEW BY ALISTAIR BARCLAY This is the latest in a series of accessible and well-illustrated books by the author on the development of British Neolithic and Bronze Age pottery. In it, he shares his fascination for the subject in a…
REVIEW BY MATTHEW CHAMPION The history of the English parish church has long been of fascination to historians, buildings archaeologists, and the general public. As a result, the number of books on the subject published over the last two centuries…
REVIEW BY HELEN GITTOS This well-illustrated and beautifully produced book is a somewhat unconventional report on the work to date on the Cerne Giant, led by Martin Papworth for the National Trust. The first half is about the recent fieldwork,…
REVIEW BY DAMIAN SHIELS This book takes as its focus the archaeological excavation of a remote mountain cave used as an IRA hideout in 1922, a location described by the authors as a ‘Civil War time capsule’. The project was…
REVIEW BY JAMES SAINSBURY The Rother Valley comprises a series of papers, compiled and edited by John Boardman and Ian Foster. The book covers the prehistoric archaeology and palaeoecology of the Rother in great detail, with a masterful contribution from…
REVIEW BY CH Engagingly written and well-illustrated, Building on the Past discusses the results of 20 archaeological excavations undertaken on a 17km stretch of the N2/M2 road corridor between Finglas, Co. Dublin, and Ashbourne, Co. Meath. The works were carried…
REVIEW BY ROGER FORSHAW The 22nd Current Research in Egyptology (CRE) conference in Montpellier hosted around 250 attendees in person and online from different institutions around the world, and covered a great variety of topics with a wide chronological and…
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS This latest narrative by Toby Wilkinson is written in his usual engaging style, drawing on the usual Greek and Roman sources, but also some 50 archives of papyri unearthed in Egypt. The three centuries between Alexander…
REVIEW BY CATHIE BRYAN Tourism in Egypt currently supports a profitable industry that was consolidated in the 19th century, when package tours were first introduced. The author’s objective is to trace the history of tourism from pharaonic times, arguing that…
REVIEW BY ANNA GARNETT Egyptology is constantly being redefined and reinterpreted to recognise more inclusive histories, helping to recentre traditional narratives. This fascinating volume brings together a range of international perspectives on these ‘supporting characters’ of Egyptology over the past…
REVIEW BY HILARY WILSON Amandine Marshall’s book, originally published in French in 2015, is a companion to her Childhood in Ancient Egypt (AUC, 2022). In the foreword to this English-language edition, Salima Ikram suggests that, despite limited source material, Marshall’s…
REVIEW BY SOPHIA CHAPPLE In Where Men No More May Reap or Sow, Richard Oram analyses five centuries of Scottish environmental history across 13 chapters. This project initially sought to cover the early medieval period up until COP26, recently held…
REVIEW BY CH Corinium is how the Romans knew Cirencester; today it is the name of the Cotswold town’s museum. Its displays include a wealth of Roman finds, as well as artefacts spanning prehistory to the present day – and…
REVIEW BY BRIAN HOGGARD The title of this book suggests it will look at the occurrence of the daisy-wheel symbol in gravestone art, which it partly does. The geographical area surveyed for the book is principally the north-east of America…
REVIEW BY JOANIE WILLETT Growing up in Cornwall has been indelibly etched throughout my social learning, which makes reading (and viewing) material about Cornwall tricky. The overwhelming most books, TV, and films are written about middle-class escape or escapism which,…
REVIEW BY CH The latest issue of Ash-sharq includes a particularly thought-provoking contribution by Dr St John Simpson, senior curator in the British Museum’s Department of the Middle East, which focuses on artefacts from Anglo-Saxon England. Among the lavish grave…
REVIEW BY RP Most people see the British footpath for its immediate purpose: a means of getting from A to B (seldom achieved without also acquiring muddy shoes and the occasional nettle-sting). Not so for Tom King, who has spent…
REVIEW BY EMLYN DODD The study of dolia, and indeed research more generally into ancient viti- and viniculture, has become increasingly popular in the past two decades. Cheung’s book fits neatly into this trajectory and complements other recent work on…
REVIEW BY OLIVIER LEMERCIER To begin with, the Bell Beaker referred only to a small ceramic cup with a very recognisable morphology and decoration. In burials, this drinking vessel was often associated with weapons (particularly daggers and archery equipment) and…
REVIEW BY CAROLINE ARBUCKLE MACLEOD As a professional female Egyptologist and archaeologist, I have learned more than perhaps necessary about the so-called ‘Fathers of Egyptology’, including their discoveries, biases, and eating habits. Their stories are of great adventurers, braving the…
REVIEW BY ANDREW SELKIRK Every year Professor Quinn has the task of sorting out applications from those wishing to study classics. Many of them say that they wish to study classics because Greece and Rome are ‘the roots of Western…
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history releases.
REVIEW BY GRAHAM GOODLAD It is now three years since Bristol University historian Ronald Hutton’s The Making of Oliver Cromwell appeared. That earlier volume took Britain’s first commoner head of state from his origins as a minor East Anglian landowner…
REVIEW BY JONATHAN EATON The legacy of the Vietnam War continues to haunt American policymakers for the example it provides of a major power drawn gradually yet inexorably into a grinding conflict with no clear pathway for withdrawal. Claiming to…
REVIEW BY MARC DESANTIS Alexander of Macedonia is known as the Western world’s greatest conqueror. Not for nothing has he been given, since antiquity, the appellation ‘the Great’. In just 11 years, he drove his army of superb cavalry and…
REVIEW BY TAYLOR DOWNING The military historian Peter Caddick-Adams has written this witty and enjoyable political biography of Winston Churchill. Unlike the multivolume authorised biography written mostly by Sir Martin Gilbert – which contained more than three million words –…