History Books > Mark Stille History Books

How we used to treat the 'mad'

Advantages: Interesting if grim insight into how the mentally afflicted were treated in ages past
Disadvantages: None really, for those interested in the subject

At the very least, this book is a salutary reminder that every time we read or hear anything about mental health issues, or care in the community, our ancestors used to talk about madness and disease – the two often being inseparable. For hundreds of years, even less than a century ago, people suffering from no more than acute depression were treatedin 'hospital' (I use the terms advisedly) in a manner which sounds horrific today. The illustration ...
...Hogarth's 18th-century series The Rake's Progress, says much about prevailing attitudes and perception at the time. A debtor, his head shaved, is incarcerated and surrounded by a crowd of gaolers and keepers while other unfortunate souls look on. People suffering from what the French called la maladie anglaise were regarded as freaks, little better than criminals. They were dumped in London's Bethlehem Hospital, alias Bedlam, founded in 1247, where ...

JOHNV 06.12.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Bedlam - Catharine Arnold

She became an MP - even with that hair, Lady Astor

Advantages: Well-written, extremely interesting, and the author comes across as genuinely likeable
Disadvantages: None

Who could resist a title like that? And is this some lesser-known Shirley Williams, a former librarian or something? The answer is no. So why the title? Shirley Catlin, as she was born, tells us in the early pages of this memoir that during her childhood her father encouraged her to climb the bookshelves in their Chelsea house, right up to the ceiling. It was a secret between the two of them, as her mother, Testament of Youth Author Vera Brittain, ...
...Apart from Margaret Thatcher and Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams was probably the best-known female politician in Britain of her generation. She recalls her early childhood in the years before the Second World War, and her evacuation to America – where she might have become a child star, in the running for the leading role in the film National Velvet, had she not been beaten to it by Elizabeth Taylor. Yet politics was always in her blood. Her father, ...

JOHNV 25.11.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Climbing the Bookshelves: The Autobiography of Shirley Williams - Shirley Williams

A fascinating history of a very rough trade

Advantages: A very interesting book about an important part of British history
Disadvantages: The specific details about Bristol will not be of interest to all readers

The Trade What is this book about? In short, this book tells the story of the part Bristol played in the transatlantic slave trade. Bristol benefitted hugely from the so-called triangular trade, whereby manufactured goods, weapons, cloth and so on were shipped from Bristol mainly to the west coast of Africa, slaves were taken from Africa to the America’s and the Caribbean and sugar, tobacco and rum were taken from these locations back to Bristol. ...
...there (and partly still is). The slave trade made Bristol – and a small number of Bristolians – rich, although very few slaves were ever seen in Bristol. The book is not purely about Bristol and other trading towns and cities are mentioned – notably London and Liverpool, of course, but also others like Plymouth, Barnstaple and Topsham. The book is in four major parts. The first part looks at the development of Bristol as a port and a trading city, ...

andyk910 18.11.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Trade - Victoria Coules

Nothing Changes

Advantages: Solid history well written
Disadvantages: None

First published in 1996 the events prior and after 5th November are as relevant today as at anytime in the last 400 years. Tales of religious intolerance and retribution and the views of James I of England- a Protestant King of Scotland- and his Catholic Queen abound.. Although the 2002 paperback edition of the book is fairly long it is not difficult to follow and the family trees of the plotters help.. If you thought Guy Fawkes was the leader of ...
...England which have 'Priest Holes' in them this will tell you who was responsible for a good many of them. As the dying embers of this years bonfire subside remember before it comes around again to get hold of the latest edition of this book. You will not be disappointed ...

45notutnai 09.11.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Gunpowder Plot - Antonia Fraser

Blue Berg - Britain Takes The Cape in 1806

Advantages: COlour pics and a battle map!
Disadvantages: Could have had some more historical info on Napoleon.

This 1806 British attack on the (French controlled) Batavian Dutch is told in a gripping and pacy tale. The book also has links to Indian history with descriptions of Seringpatam and Tipu Sultan, as well as the British colonialising effort in India, China, and Australia. General Baird the commander of the 1806 British force that attacked the Cape of Good Hope, had been imprisoned at Seringpatam and had been part of the storming party at the city ...
...1806, and was preceded by a skirmish on Melkbosch beach, and finished with a standoff of over a week on the Hottentots Holland Mountains at Somerset West between the British and Batavian Dutch perched on their mountain top defence line. This Battle was the precursor to the British in Southern Africa, and the 1820 Settlers, English settlement in Cape Town can be linked backed to it. In fact much of English speaking Southern Africa is seminally linked ...

ClassicHistory 06.11.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Blue Berg : Britain takes the Cape - M.R.D. Anderson