Reviews

El Generalísimo: Franco: Power, Violence and the Quest for Greatness by Giles Tremlett considers the making of the mediocrity at the heart of modern Spain.

The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide by Howard W. French traces the line between civil rights in the US and decolonisation in Africa.

Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations and the Untold Story of the 1960s by Thant Myint-U captures the optimism and ambition of Burma’s bridge between worlds.

In Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World, John Blair proves that you can’t keep a good corpse down.

The Diver of Paestum: Youth, Eros and the Sea in Ancient Greece by Tonio Hölscher – and translated by Robert Savage – searches beneath the surface for the meaning behind a beguiling fresco.

The Indefatigable Asa Briggs: A Biography by Adam Sisman is a detailed portrait of that voluminous chronicler of Victorian things.

Mary Chamberlain’s groundbreaking oral history turns 50. This new edition of Fenwomen: A Portrait of Women in an English Village invites reflection on half a century of change.

More than science waiting to be understood, The Medieval Moon: A History of Haunting and Blessing by Ayoush Lazikani illuminates the enchanted orb of poets.

They go low, we go lower. The Rage of Party: How Whig Versus Tory Made Modern Britain by George Owers offers up the origins of Britain’s fractious political culture.

The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom by David Woodman looks beyond the empty tomb to find perhaps the most consequential monarch of the Anglo-Saxon age.