Can The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra and The Fall of Egypt and the Rise of Rome: A History of the Ptolemies fashion a finale for the pharaohs?
In The Writers’ Castle: Reporting History at Nuremberg, Uwe Neumahr discovers that it wasn’t just the men in the dock who had scandalous social lives and hidden agendas.
Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women and God’s Own Gentlewoman bring the real world of medieval women out of the margins.
In A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America, Richard Slotkin attempts to untangle the stories that the US tells itself about race, colonialism and the Civil War. Is it a lost cause?
The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett picks through the fragments of George Villiers, James VI & I’s favourite mistake.
In listening to the war’s loudest voices, Crimean Quagmire: Tolstoy, Russell and the Birth of Modern Warfare by Gregory Carleton drowns out the diversity of opinion.
Recent books by Greg Eghigian, Joshua Blu Buhs and Jeffrey J. Kripal demonstrate the challenges that historians face in making sense of Fortean times.
Bard romance? Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare by Will Tosh sets the stage for the next wave of accessible queer histories.
In Catherine de’ Medici: The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen, Mary Hollingsworth helps the pragmatic queen escape her ‘black legend’.
Outposts of Diplomacy: A History of the Embassy by G.R. Berridge shows us that debates about the role of the ambassador are as old as the institution itself.
