BOOKS


the troops who fought for those leaders.


Previews New Titles: Non-fiction


Amberley, HB, £20, 9781398101234 The dramatic story of a tumultuous period of English history— “a thrilling century of betrayal, loyalty and lost causes”—when kings fell, families were split, and a way of life was lost for ever.


Nadine Akkerman Elizabeth Stuart: Queen of Hearts OUP, 14th, HB, £20, 9780199668304 This “dazzling” new biog- raphy of “one of history’s most misunderstood queens” is based on unparalleled access to her original letters, and over- turns the narrative of her as the long pitied “Winter Queen”, more interested in the theatre and her pet monkeys than politics or her children.


Richard J Aldrich & Rory Cormac The Secret Royals: Spying and the Crown, from Victoria to Diana Atlantic, 7th, HB, £25, 9781786499127 Uncovers the long- standing relationship between the Royal Family and the intelligence community, showing how the British secret services grew out of persistent attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria and then operated on a private and informal basis, drawing on close personal relation- ships between senior spies, the aristocracy and the monarchy.


T D Asch The Century of Calamity: England in the Long Eleventh Century


Popular science


Daniel Whiteson & Jorge Cham Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe John Murray, 28th, HB, £16.99, 9781529331042


Marc David Baer The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs Basic Books, 14th, HB, £30, 9781473695702 I’ve much enjoyed what I’ve so far read of this epic new history of the Ottoman Empire, the 600-year dynasty which connected East to West as never before. Charting the Ottomans’ remarkable rise from a frontier principal- ity to a world empire, it also traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic and Byzantine heritage, and upends our Western notions of sexual- ity, the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration and more in the process. To be presented in a beautiful glittery package with maps and colour plates.


Patrick Bishop Operation Jubilee: Dieppe 1942: The Folly and the Sacrifice Viking, 14th, HB, £20, 9780241389669 For this “grand and gallant tale of heroic failure” during the Dieppe raid of 1942, the author of Bomber Boys draws on first-hand testimony and recently declassified source material, from archives across several countries, to reveal the big picture and unearth telling details.


the Flaming Rooster” of Japanese Buddhist tradition.


Jeremy Black England in the Age of Dickens 1812-70 Amberley, HB, £20, 9781398101692 In the first of a planned three-book series on authors in their historical context, Black draws on the biography and writ- ings of Dickens to show how his work expressed his experience of Victorian England, and also defined it for generations to come.


Sumantra Bose Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st Century Conflict Yale, HB, £18.99, 9780300256871 “Authoritative and vividly written” account of the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, from 1947 to the present day, drawing on the author’s own intimate knowledge of the region.


Edward Brooke-Hitching The Devil’s Atlas: An Explorer’s Guide to Heavens, Hells and Afterworlds Simon & Schuster, 14th, HB, £25, 9781398503557 The author of The Phantom Atlas returns with an illustrated guide to the heavens, hells and lands of the dead as imagined through history by cultures and religions around the world; from the 13 heavens of the Aztecs to the “Hell of


Bruce Clark Athens: A History Head of Zeus, 28th, HB, £25, 9781788548144 This sweeping but accessible narrative history of Athens tells the 3,000-year story of the birthplace of civilisa- tion, evoking its cultural richness and political resonance in an “epic, kaleidoscopic” work.


Hodder, 28th, HB, £16.99, 9781529303261 The author, assistant keeper of Ancient Mesopotamia at the British Museum, explains why a belief in ghosts is what makes us human. Drawing on evidence from the earliest archaeology and ancient writings, he looks at ghosts from a markedly different standpoint to that of most ghostly literature. Accessible, eclectic and beautifully packaged, I’m told. It sounds fascinating.


Susan Doran Elizabeth & Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens British Library, HB, £40, 9780712353489 Accompanying a new British Library exhibition, a bold look at gender roles and the pressures of being a female ruler in a man’s world, through the lives of Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots.


Neil Faulkner Abandoned Places of World War I Amber, 14th, HB, £19.99, 9781838860455 From an overgrown concrete bunker at Ypres to the deserts of Jordan, a photographic guide to the lasting remnants of the First World War, accompanied by explana- tory text.


Irving Finkel The First Ghosts


One to Watch


Eminent CERN physicist Whiteson (inset) and cartoonist Cham are the dynamic nerdy duo behind the hugely successful online PHD Comics (audience of 50 million since 2008), and podcast “Daniel and Jorge Explain the


Universe”. Now, in this illustrated “troubleshooting guide to the perplexing aspects of reality”, they get together once again to answer the “most impor- tant, most outrageous and funniest questions about everything from space, time and gravity to the chances of meeting your older self inside a wormhole”. “If the universe had an FAQ, this would be it”, says John Murray.


46 9th July 2021 Film, TV & music Victoria Wood & Jasper Rees (ed)


Victoria Wood Unseen on TV Trapeze, 28th, HB, £20, 9781398707450


Gretchen Friemann The Treaty: The Gripping Story of the Negotiations That Brought About Irish Independence and Led to the Cold War Penguin Sandycove, 7th, HB, £16.99, 9781844885640 A fresh look at both sides of the negotiations that created the Irish Free State and divided a country, and at the Treaty which has shaped UK-Irish relations for a century. Published for the Treaty’s centenary.


Helen Fry Spymaster: The Man Who Saved MI6 Yale, HB, £30, 9780300255959 This story of Thomas Kendrick—“the ultimate spy of the Second World War”—relates how, under the guise of “British Passport Officer”, he ran networks across Europe, facilitated the escape of Austrian Jews, and would later set up the “M Room”: a listening operation which elicited hugely significant enemy information. And yet his life and work remains largely unknown.


Amitav Ghosh The Nutmeg’s Curse John Murray, 14th, HB, £20, 9781529369434 The story of the nutmeg and its violent trajectory from its native islands becomes a parable for a wider colonial mindset which justifies the exploi- tation of human life and the natural environment even today. Taking in the pandemic, Black Lives Matter and more, Ghosh shows that the dynamics of climate change are rooted in a centuries- old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism.


Bruce Gordon Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet Yale, HB, £25, 9780300235975 This major new biography of Huldrych Zwingli, the “warrior preacher” who shaped the early Reformation, overturns previous interpretations by portraying him as a fiercely radical and divi- sive figure.


David Graeber & David Wengrow The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity Allan Lane, 19th, HB, £30, 9780241402429 This “breathtakingly ambitious” retelling of the last 30,000 years of human history draws


One to Watch


In researching Let’s Do It, his official biography of Wood, Reese discovered a treasure chest of the much-loved comedian’s unseen work, now collected here. From the first piece of comic prose written for her school magazine, to the material written for the TV specials of her


maturity and the film script she was working on when she fell ill, it is “full of secret gems spanning nearly half a century” and provides a “unique and intimate insight into the working of a singular comedy talent”.


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