History Books > Alison Weir History Books

Advantages: brilliant!
Disadvantages: wanted to know more.

...been interested in history and the Tudor period is my favourite so this book really appealed to me. The reviews on the back cover claimed that the book was an entertaining account of Henry V11’s complicated domestic history, full of interesting detail. It was the promise of interesting detail taken from reliable sources, which persuaded me to buy this book as opposed to other accounts on offer. So heres a brief taster of what this book has to offer, ...
...The content ********** At the front of the book is a really well detailed chronology starting from 1485 when Henry Tudor wins the battle of Bosworth Field and the Tudor Dynasty begins to 1558 when Elizabeth1 comes to the throne. Part 1 of the book is devoted to Katherine of Aragon, Henry’s wife for over 20 years. There is a wealth of excellent data about this queen as she was a princess in her own right. The book charts her life from her early ... Read review

Advantages: Engaging style, good history, original sources quoted.
Disadvantages: A tendency to be revisionist just for the hell of it.

...iconic Queen With Two Crowns, Eleanor of Aquitaine, began about halfway into my A-Level studies in Medieval History, at which point the Angevin Empire became the central unit around which much of our work revolved. This 'Empire', as it is now termed, was never recognised as such during the reign of Henry II, at which time its power was at its zenith, but it was an extremely powerful force in the Western world during the twelfth and early thirteenth ...
...Queen, Eleanor. Eleanor has long been disparaged by historians as a 'whore', a 'very evil woman' and even as the fulfilment of one of Merlin's prophecies - 'the eagle of the broken bonds shall rejoice in her third nesting', the 'third nesting' here being usually conveniently taken to mean her third *son*, the dashing Richard the Lionheart. Throughout the middle ages, ballads of Eleanor's misdemeanours were already beginning to circulate, so that ... Read review

Advantages: Intelligent, accessible writing, great storytelling.
Disadvantages: Hmmm @ Thomas More.

...a damp, dank room in the Tower of London? Or is he the most wrongly maligned figure in English history, blackguarded by the upstart Tudors so that the English people would accept them as rulers? Ask any historian and they will tell you that their job is - for the most part - detection. History is all about finding clues. History is about piecing together tiny shreds of evidence. In this way, the historian hopes to interpret the past. We all like ...
...of popular history than the most famous murder mystery of all; the story of the Princes in the Tower? This double murder has fascinated for over five hundred years. The disappearance – and we assume, death – of the erstwhile Prince of Wales and Duke of York has never, in the public imagination at least, been satisfactorily solved. Did the boys' uncle, Richard III really "do them in"? Or should we look elsewhere, to Henry VII perhaps, or perhaps even ... Read review

Advantages: Captivating, informative, heart-renching
Disadvantages: Alot of information to take in.

War Junkie By Jon Steele ISBN- 0552149845 Price- £6.99 Published- Orginally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press a division of Transworld publishers in 2002. Later Corgi edition published in 2003. Found at- www.booksattransworld.co.uk War novels has always intrested me but War Junkie particularly caught my eye as it is very different from normal war stories. As i did not have alot of prior knowledge of modern war times this book was very ...
...make it enjoyable. War Junkie is written as a biography through the eyes of a camera man rather than an actual soldier. I found this intriguing having the story told by a cameraman gave the advantage of having all angles of the distrubances covered. It also tells you how cameramen and journalists also risk their lifes at the stake of capturing the horror and tell their story to the world. Jon Steele became a ITN cameraman in 1982 and has established ... Read review

Advantages: A gripping and extraordinary episode in history
Disadvantages: You need a good interest in WW2

...combatants and civillians. Stalingrad was perhaps the most important turning point of the second World War. Hitler's mad obsession with capturing the city named after his Soviet rival eventually cost the Germans the 250,000 men of the Sixth Army. Their remaining forces never recovered their balance and were soon in a rapid retreat all along the Eastern front. The first section of 'Stalingrad' deals with launch of the invasion of the Soviet Union. ...
...knew the Soviet counter-attack at Stalingrad destroyed the Roumanian 'satellite' armies fighting with the Germans in Russia I'd never really read much about it. Beevor takes time to dwell on the Roumanians and how they felt about the Germans and the war. So I felt I learnt new things from 'Stalingrad' throughout. The accounts of life in Stalingrad during the campaign are vivid and haunting. Red Army troops are boated in over the Volga river. This ... Read review