Reading time: 6 minutes
Around 2,500 years ago, a princess living in what is now modern-day Iraq collected a number of artefacts, including a statue, a boundary stone and a mace head. The items, which show signs of preservation, date from around 2100 BCE to 600 BCE. This collection, it is generally thought, was the world’s first known “museum”.
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Renowned historian Max Hastings recreates one of the most thrilling events of World War II in “Operation Pedestal: The Fleet That Battled to Malta, 1942” – an action-packed tale of courage, fortitude, loss, and triumph against all odds.
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A review of the “grand and thrilling” book “In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire” by Laurence Bergreen.
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Reading time: 2 minutes
A look at the book Forgotten Anzacs: The Campaign in Greece, 1941 – Revised Edition, by Peter Ewer: the largely unknown story of an Anzac force which fought in Greece during World War II.
Reading time: 2 minutes
A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism by Caroline Moorehead – the powerful and inspiring true story of the women of the partisan resistance who fought against Italy’s fascist regime during World War II.
Reading time: 2 minutes
A look at Toussaint Louverture: A Revolutionary Life by Philippe Girard
the definitive biography of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture, leader of the only successful slave revolt in world history.
Reading time: 3 minutes
The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghetto, by Judy Batalion – an unforgettable true tale of war, the fight for freedom, exceptional bravery, female friendship, and survival in the face of staggering odds.
Reading time: 1 minute
A look at the novel Chickenhawk, Robert Mason’s bestselling account of his service as a chopper pilot in Vietnam–a no-holds-barred autobiography that reveals the war’s shattering legacy in the heart of a returning vet.
Reading time: 2 minutes
A look at Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands, by Dan Jones – A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope, told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Templars.
Reading time: 2 minutes
What happened to art in the great Age of Discovery when civilisations encountered each other for the first time? A look at the book Civilisations: First Contact / The Cult of Progress, by David Olusoga.
“Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast” by Marjoleine Kars: an astonishing original work of history, Blood on the River will change our understanding of revolutions, slavery and of the story of freedom in the New World.
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Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper – a magisterial new biography which goes beyond Luther’s theology to investigate the inner life of the religious reformer who has been called “the last medieval man and the first modern one.”
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