Popular history book reviews

The Rage of Party - review

2026-07-10T00:00:00Z

Our review of The Rage of Party: How Whig Versus Tory Made Modern Britain, by George Owers, first published in September 2025.

This lively account of the origins of party politics in English (and then British) history is enormously entertaining. This ranks among the most enjoyable history books I have ever read, with a cast of larger-than-life personalities and barely believable shenanigans.

Anyone feeling cynical about our current crop of politicians and the state of politics would do well to read this book to get a sense of perspective.

★★★★★

The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries are probably among the most significant periods in English and British history, yet they do not loom large in the national consciousness. The years 1688 to 1714, covering the reigns of William and Mary and Anne, witnessed the Glorious Revolution (1688), the establishment of the Bank of England (1694) and the Acts of Union between England and Scotland (1706 to 1707). It was the era which helped lay the foundations for the economic and military dominance of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century and established a constitutional settlement which endures to this day. Furthermore, as The Rage of Party; how Whig versus Tory made modern Britain by George Owers argues, that era also saw the start of party politics and even ‘culture wars’ which are all too familiar today.

A tale of peculation, betrayal, attempted assassination, whoring, outrageously cynical parliamentary scheming and even sensational accusations of lesbianism.

George Owers, describing his own book, The Rage of Party

The legacy of the Civil War

To understand this era properly, it is helpful to remember that the English Civil War (1642 to 1651) and the Interregnum (1649 to 1660) were within living memory. We may feel that politics today are highly partisan and fractious, but between 1688 and 1714, the idea that politics might ultimately be a matter of life and death was not as far-fetched as we might think.

The fractures left by the Civil War and Cromwellian regime ran deep and go some way towards explaining the sheer hatred and vitriol with which Whigs and Tories regarded one another. It certainly informed the straw-man stereotypes which they sought to besmirch their opponents. Whig politicians portrayed the Tories as crypto-Catholics, seeking to undermine the entire Protestant Reformation on the altar of Stuart loyalism; while the Tories portrayed their opponents as closet atheists and republicans who would drag England back to the worst excesses of Cromwell’s England.

In each case, the stereotypes are mostly false but often had a grain of truth. Thomas Wharton, 1st Marquess of Wharton, one of the leading members of the ‘Whig Junto’ that dominated politics, was notorious for drunkenly breaking into a church where he allegedly urinated on the altar and then defecated in the pulpit.

It’s simplistic, but not entirely unfair, to see the Tories as the heirs of the Cavaliers, whilst the Whigs took up the baton from the Roundheads.

Culture wars

Demure, conscientious, prick-eared vermin.

a Tory pamphleteer describing Whigs, The Rage of Party

Owers repeatedly suggests that the Whigs regarded the Tories as ‘deplorables’, implicitly drawing parallels with how Hilary Clinton described Republican voters during the 2016 US presidential election campaign. Whigs saw themselves as England’s natural ruling class (as demonstrated by their tone of entitlement and frustrated rage whenever Queen Anne attempted to marginalise them) and concurrently viewed the Tories as unsophisticated rustics clinging to outdated ideals. As with many aspects of this time, there is, as George Owers puts it, the ‘uncanny sense of being both recognisable and strange’.

The idea of a political elite whose values are out of sync with the broader public may seem familiar today, but the issues about which those frictions occur have changed significantly. Above all else, for Tories, it was the Church of England, and its supposed endangerment by atheistic Whig radicals, which served as a rallying cry for much of this era.

This is best illustrated by the furore over a sermon by Dr Henry Sacheverell, an Anglican clergyman whose ‘presumption, spleen and shamelessness are apt to take the breath away even at three hundred years’ distance’. He was, like many of the characters in this book, a roaring alcoholic and charlatan. On 5 November 1709, he preached a sermon at St Paul’s Cathedral which was a passionate attack on Dissenters and their sympathisers in the political establishment (i.e. the Whigs). The reaction, both in favour and against his views, was so violent that Whigs had him impeached in the House of Commons, which ordered that his sermon should be ritually burnt. He became a martyr to Tory England and inspired riots in his favour across England in 1710. The author tells us that he even became a ‘sex-symbol’ and ‘pin-up for Tory ladies’.

In terms of what ordinary people thought, we cannot know with any certainty, but Owers speculates that it was probably Tory rather than Whig values which resonated with most ordinary people at that time, voters and non-voters alike, which may help explain their consistent electoral success, even in periods when the powers of government patronage lay in the hands of the Whigs.

Violence

The threat, and at times the reality, of violence is a running theme throughout this book.

In 1683, there was a plot to assassinate Charles II and his brother James which may have involved some of the leading Whig politicians of the day. Owers notes that the accusations of Jacobitism made against the Tories were effectively accusations of treason, for which the penalty was beheading. Tories may have felt relatively secure in their lives (if not their political fortunes) under Queen Anne, but many were probably concerned for their safety under the impending Hanoverian succession, with Whig propaganda particularly effective at persuading the future George I that the Tories were his mortal enemies.

It was also an age in which duelling was still an established way of settling political feuds. Charles, Lord Mohun, ‘was addicted to drinking and whoring only slightly less than his real passion in life: violence’. He fought his first duel at 15 and by the age of 21 had already been tried for murder twice in front of the House of Lords (peers could claim the privilege of trial before their equals).

Lord Mohun (a Whig) and the Duke of Hamilton (a Tory) were bitter political and personal enemies. They had also been in dispute for over ten years over rival claims to a sizable estate. In 1712, the rivalry came to blows, with a duel fought between the two. Hamilton prevailed in the duel with a mortal blow to Lord Mohun’s groin. But the Duke of Hamilton also died, and the circumstances of his death were unclear: the Whig version was that he died of wounds from the duel. The Tories claimed that whilst Hamilton was on the ground helping Mohun, he was stabbed in the back from Mohun’s second MacCartney (a man who himself had a shady past – in 1709 Queen Anne had dismissed him from his army commission for raping a clergyman’s widow). Tories suspected that Hamilton was killed at the instigation of the Duke of Marlborough to prevent him taking up a post as Ambassador to France.

How to fight an election

He was so unlike Mankind, that an Indictment is preferred against his Wife at the Old-Baily for Bestiality, where he is to prove what species he is of.

a Tory referring to Henry Care (aka ‘Monkey Care’) (a Whig publisher), The Rage of Party

Elections in this period were a lot more fun than nowadays. About one in four adult males had the vote; many expected to be lavished with food and drink in exchange for their vote. One candidate issued tickets which could be redeemed for ale later in exchange for a pledge to vote for the right candidate. Richard Steele (a Whig) offered a cash prize for the baby born nearest to exactly nine months after the election. The theory was that by providing wives with a financial incentive to show affection to their husbands at the time of the election, he would endear himself to the husbands (his theory worked – he won the election).

Elections involved vast quantities of alcohol: political agents would often go from household to household sharing a jug of ale with prospective voters. One Tory agent fell into the River Eden and drowned after a day canvassing for votes.

If the carrot did not work, candidates and their supporters could, and did, employ the stick (sometimes literally). One priest threatened his congregation with damnation if they did not vote for his preferred candidate. A sheriff adjourned a poll in Hampshire to the Isle of Wight to discourage voting. In one contest, we are told that Tory tactics against their Whig opponents included ‘beating them with sticks, imprisoning them on false pretences, and, in one case, attempted strangulation’.

What I thought of it

What I particularly enjoyed about this book was that as well as being immensely entertaining, it also helped me understand a period of which I previously only had a hazy conception. The author manages to combine the colour of individual personalities and rivalries with the ability to understand the structural forces acting on England at the time, while also putting political events in the context of a broader sweep of British history.

We are told that Whigs were at the centre of the ‘great engine of taxation, debt and war that emerged in the 1690s’. They were consistently more enthusiastic for an aggressive foreign policy, which was funded by taxes on land, borne largely by the landed gentry, among whom Tory support was particularly strong. Conversely, the system of national debt established by the Bank of England generated profits for City financiers, many of whom were Dissenters and most of whom were Whigs. For rural England, economic and cultural grievance intermingled to toxic effect.

Fake news

Another aspect of the book that I particularly liked is the perspective it provides on modern complaints about politics. I often read that the World Wide Web and social media have exacerbated political echo chambers, fake news and conspiracy theories. But those issues were also rampant in the reigns of William and Mary and Anne.

The Whigs loved conspiracy theories involving Roman Catholics. They also spread salacious rumours regarding the relationship of Queen Anne with her favourite Abigail Hill (later Lady Marsham) and sent the latter death threats.

Perhaps the age when most people got their information from (in the UK) the BBC was merely a brief interlude related to the dominance of radio and then television. What we are witnessing now may be a return to a historical norm.

Conclusion

This book is a perfect combination of great entertainment and thought-provoking argument and comes highly recommended. It also covers a neglected period of British history which provides an interesting perspective on modern politics.

New history books in June 2026

2026-07-02T00:00:00Z

Ok here's what we've got from last month (published in the UK in hardback). With the World Cup in full swing and England not yet out of it, I'm pleased to see at least one football history book on the list! Here are the three that appeal to me at first glance:

Cold War Football: A History in Ten Matches, by Tony Shaw, Alan McDougall. Possibly a shameless cash-in on the World Cup but I am still pulled in by the premise. As the legendary Golden Leg reminds us in the cult film Shaolin Soccer: "Football is war".
Lords of the Salt Road: The Norse Earls of Orkney and the Viking World, by Angus Konstam. Having visited Orkney for the day last year, arriving by Magnus Lounge, I am a fan of the islands. And although it is Orkney's Neolithic history that really appeals I would like to find out more about the Viking connection too.
Leaky Aqueducts, Battle Pigeons, and Mystery Cults: More Frequently Asked Questions About the Ancient Greeks and Romans, by Garrett Ryan. Looks like fun summer reading, perhaps similar to the Randall Munroe 'What if?' books that my son enjoys except with an ancient history slant.

Click the book covers to see a zoomed in image and links to Amazon if you like to buy your books there.

The full list:

📕 Alexander: God, King, Man
📘 The Traveller: George Forster's Search for Humanity
📔 The Twitnam Summer: Friendship, Satire and the Writing of Gulliver’s Travels
📗 The August Coup: The Destruction of the Soviet Union and the Making of New Russia 1985-1991
📙 Regina: A New History of Women and Power
📓 Cold War Football: A History in Ten Matches
📒 Lords of the Salt Road: The Norse Earls of Orkney and the Viking World
📙 The Long Revolution: Creating a United States After 1776
📘 A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance England
📔 Leaky Aqueducts, Battle Pigeons, and Mystery Cults: More Frequently Asked Questions About the Ancient Greeks and Romans
📗 China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period
📕 Entangled Empires: Four Centuries of China - Russia Relations

The Black Death - review

2026-06-28T00:00:00Z

Our review of The Black Death: A Global History, by Thomas Asbridge, first published in April 2026.

The Black Death: A Global History successfully combines a broad view of this demographic disaster, with tightly focussed personal stories of tragedy.

It also serves as both a great introduction to the subject and a window on the latest scholarly thinking. Recommended reading!

★★★★☆

I, Agnolo di Tura, called the Fat, buried my five children with my own hands... It is impossible for the human tongue to recount the awful thing. Indeed, one who did not see such horribleness can be called blessed [and] it was all so horrendous that I, the writer, cannot think of it and so will not continue.

Agnolo do Tura, local shoe maker and part time financial official, quoted in The Black Death by Thomas Asbridge

The Black Death in its first wave from 1347-1353 killed millions of people across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Mortality rates differed from place to place but were usually between 25% to 75% of the population. Once the Black Death germ arrived it never went away and returned to decimate populations every 10-15 years for centuries to come.

The numbers of people dying are so large it can be hard to make sense of them.

One attempt is by comparison: for example, at something like 50% mortality, it was over ten times more lethal than the first world war where a little less than 5% of Europe’s population is thought to have perished.

A personal approach

The approach adopted by Thomas Asbridge in The Black Death: A Global History is to focus in on the individual stories of those affected, so we can try to feel and therefore understand what it might have been like. For example, the story of Agnolo do Tura in Sienna above, who described all of his five children dying of the disease. Agnolo also claimed that:

...over the next five months some 80,000 people died in Siena and its suburbs, leaving only 10,000 men in the city, such that the once-bustling streets ‘seemed almost uninhabited’... Shockingly, the city’s total population did not recover to pre-pandemic levels until the early twentieth century.

Thomas Asbridge, The Black Death

How global is global?

Asbridge takes us on a tour of the Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, bringing us tales of disease, suffering and death from:

Italy (the various city states)
Spain
Portugal
France
England
Egypt
Syria
Tunisia
Byzantium

But it is the characters rather than the countries that form the backbone of the book, and we hear from some of the famous and not-so-famous people of this age. To pick a few at random:

Agnolo di Tura (Sienese shoemaker)
Clement VI (Avignon Pope)
Djnaibeg Khan (of the Mongol Golden Horde)
Geoffrey Chaucer (English writer of Canterbury Tales fame)
Ibn Battuta (aristocratic Moroccan scholar and traveller)
Ibn Khaldun (Tunisian scholar and historian)
Joan of England (who died of the plague in 1348, daughter of Edward III)
John Lovekin (fishmonger and 14th century mayor of London)
John Wycliff (English theologian and religious reformer
Pignol Zucchello (a moderately succesful Tuscan merchant based in Venice - no wikipedia page).

The rest of the world

One thing you might have spotted from the list of countries and people is that while this is certainly an international bunch there are no Asian, Indian or sub-saharan African figures. Given the book’s sub-title of A Global History I was hoping to hear about how the pandemic affected the rest of the world. I think it took until at least halfway through the book before the author explains that no-one really knows the impact of the disease on these non-mediterranean areas so there’s not much to say.

For those interested: the Black Death may have affected China at the same time as Europe and the Middle East - and China may have even been affected first. But because it was one of those periods where the Chinese Empire, long united, was now busy fighting each other, so records are more patchy. As well as this, the language used by Chinese physicians was very different to Western doctors (they were more likely to talk about the pulse than the humours), so this makes it hard to compare symptoms across borders.

In what is now India and Pakistan, it appears as if the Black Death just didn’t have much of an impact. I didn’t do much further digging here but this is still a big mystery to me particularly as (I think) the plague was an issue in the Indian sub-continent in later centuries.

Finally sub-saharan Africa is sadly neglected in the records that we have, and in the subsequent histories, so it is difficult to say much at all.

The worst of times

Back to the Mediterranean then.

Asbridge suggests that the cities which suffered most were those cities in Islamic states which (a) were very populous and (b) didn’t try to flee the disease. The reason the citizens of Islamic didn’t run away whereas the citizens of Christian cities often did if they could¹ was that Islamic clerics believed that the Black Death was sent by God to scourge humanity. It was therefore sacrilegious presumption to try to dodge the thunderbolts. The solution instead was to gather together and use the power of prayer to avert disaster. This may have improved morale but it exacerbated the impact.

Cairo was one of the cities that was worst affected:

In all, probably well in excess of 250,000 lives were lost, though the exact figure cannot be determined. [An observer] remarked that ‘the plague destroyed mankind in Cairo’

Thomas Asbridge, The Black Death

Similar medically ill-advised religious gatherings were organised in Christian towns and cathedrals, but there wasn’t the same stigma for those who preferred to just get out of there, which meant that people who had the ability to flee often did.

Finding scapegoats

As well as gathering together the stories of people from different countries, Asbridge also discusses the experience of Jewish people living in Europe during the Black Death. Jewish people were often already viewed with suspicion by the communities in which they lived, and the atmosphere of fear and paranoia accompanying the plague brought out appalling behavior from their neighbours:

...tens of thousands of Jews were killed in this period and, by 1351, more than 200 Jewish communities had been exterminated. In the decades that followed, this persecution prompted the mass migration of surviving Jews into eastern Europe, more than quadrupling Poland’s and Hungary’s Jewish populations.

Thomas Asbridge, The Black Death

Asbridge also highlights the connivance of local authorities as the pandemic progressed. Instead of trying to restrain the violence against Jewish people, as they had sometimes done at the start of plague, officials used the law as an additional weapon:

Terrible as it had been, the first phase of antisemitic violence during the pandemic had been largely condemned by authorities, even when some officials participated. Now, the annihilation of Jewish communities was rapidly lent the veneer of legal authority and covered in the cloak of bureaucratic legitimacy. Thereafter, the persecution was no longer the preserve of incensed mobs. Its victims no longer numbered in the tens or hundreds. Instead, officially sanctioned acts of mass murder targeting thousands became commonplace, as a wave of pogroms swept from Switzerland into Germany.

Thomas Asbridge, The Black Death

What’s in the book

I felt like The Black Death was actually two or three books rolled into one.

The first section is a survey of the effect of the Black Death and how people reacted
The second reviews how our knowledge of the disease has progressed and the current medical consensus
The third section looks at the consequences of the Black Death on the course of humanity more generally

For me the first section on ‘what happened’ was the strongest, the second section on the disease itself was very interesting but felt like an optional appendix, and the third section on the long term effects was weaker: given the Black Death did happen and then stuff happened after the Black Death, maybe the stuff was caused by the Black Death? Like much of speculative history writing it suffers from working with a sample size of one.²

The most interesting snippet that I took from the second section on the medical side of things was that the traditional view of how the Black Death spread - by fleas riding on rats - is certainly only a part of the picture and probably not the most important part. This is because rats are just not fast enough to explain the phenomenal speed of transmission³.

...this ease of transmission cannot be explained by the traditional rat-flea-vector theory alone. In truth, no wholly satisfactory solution to this mystery has yet been presented

Thomas Asbridge, The Black Death

Writing style

The Black Death, despite the subject matter, is pleasant to read, with methodical rather than scintillating prose. The personal stories are the most absorbing. Always welcome: there is also a range of nice pictures at the back.

Conclusion

The Black Death: A Global History successfully combines a broad view of this demographic disaster, with tightly focussed personal stories of tragedy.

It also serves as both a great introduction to the subject and a window on the latest scholarly thinking. Recommended reading!

A famous example is Francesco Petrarch in Italy who both fled affected areas and wrote a book - the Decamaron - about a group of noble-folk telling stories while waiting out the plague in a country house. ↩︎
For example, was the reformation in the early sixteenth century caused by the Black Death in the mid 14th century? Could be, says Asbridge: “While the Church seemed to plunge still deeper into the mire of iniquity during the age of plague, the devastation caused by the Black Death and its aftermath moved many lay Catholics to engage more personally and actively with their faith.” ↩︎
To save you the trouble I have asked AI the average walking speed of a rat, which is plausibly said to be 0.7 kilometres per hour. ↩︎

The Four Heavens - review

2026-06-07T00:00:00Z

Our review of The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya, by David Stuart, first published in April 2026.

An overview of the history of the Mayan people, from the earliest records to the Classical heyday, The Four Heavens brings us right up to date with the latest thinking and discoveries.

I found the dense overlapping record of kings, queens and their dynasties a bit dry at times, but the flipside is that you get a factual no-nonsense account that puts the Mayan people back at the heart of their own story.

★★★☆☆

Most human societies tend towards hierarchies: someone at the top giving orders, and everyone else at least pretending to follow the rules. And we tell each other stories to justify to ourselves why the rulers are in charge.

A popular story throughout history is that if your dad had the top job, that means you deserve it too. Often this idea is enhanced by the notion that the king is anointed by God (or at least his bishop). In the UK right now we all know that the prime minister is the most popular person in the country, according to a very complicated popularity contest.

Leaders in the Mayan world in central america had the clever idea that the reason they were in charge was because they were responsible for the integrity of space-time.

As “cosmic” actors, kings, queens, and other elites were charged with the essential role of... managing and curating the flow of time itself... Whereas farmers worked the fields, Maya rulers took on the responsibility of “growing” and sustaining the seasons that allowed agriculture to exist in the first place.

David Stuart, The Four Heavens

Nice work if you can get it!

David Stuart puts names and sometimes faces to these kings and queens in The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya, 'new' because it is only recently that we have been able to read the script that allows us to know and date these “time lords”, with Stuart himself being one of the key figures in this decipherment.

Where did they come from?

The Mayan people lived (and live) in south-western Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. The foundational event that allowed them to live in ever bigger communities was the domestication of maize (sweetcorn) in around 1500 BCE. Amazingly it only took a few hundred years of maize eating - to about 1000 to 800 BCE - before people were banding together in sufficient numbers to build massive earthen plazas and pyramids. One huge site called Aguda Fenix is a rectangular platform an incredible 1,400 metres long by 400 metres wide, and has been estimated (so wikipedia reports) that it took 10-13 million person days of labour to build.¹

From this point onwards there were various ups and downs, traceable in the construction and abandonment of pyramids, plazas and platforms, with a particularly notable downturn in 100-200 BCE when many of the Late Preclassic centres were left uninhabited.

The Four Heavens focuses on the period from 200 CE to about 800 CE - 'Classic Maya' civilisation.

What happened?

Despite the good progress made in deciphering the inscriptions we have on pyramids and whatnot, and while we can figure out the names and lifespans of a large number of kings and queens in the Classic Maya period, it is still quite hard to trace what happened over this 600 year period.

Part of the blame must go to the Spanish conquistadors, who as well as killing and enslaving lots of Mayan people also did their best to erase any records of their culture.

The most notorious example of this is Diego de Landa, a Franciscan Friar who visited various Mayan towns and settlements and asked if they had any good books to read. He would have a quick leaf through, ask a few questions about the incomprehensible characters and then - curiosity satisfied - set fire to them.

In his own words:

These people also make use of certain characters or letters, with which they wrote in their books their ancient matters and their sciences, and by these and by drawings and by certain signs in these drawings they understood their affairs and made others understand and taught them. We found a large number of these books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which there was not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree and which caused them great affliction.

Landa's Relación de la Cosas de Yucatán, translation by Tozzer, 169 ²

A plethora of pyramids

What we do have though is the many awe inspiring ruins that were left behind such as Tikal, Uxmal and Chichen Itza. Through careful interpretion of the date and style of these ruins, plus the inscriptions and the odd pot, historians can make some educated guesses.

For example there is little doubt that there was a massive incursion into the Mayan lands in 378 by the forces of Teotihuacan, a place 1,300 kms away near to what is now Mexico City. Individual inscriptions even note that “Sihyajk'ahk' (a leader of the Teotihuacans) was here” with a precise date. This was such an important occasion that Mayan leaders were harking back to it as the good old days for hundreds of years afterwards, linking their own dynasties with the Mexicans.

So we can say exactly when this invasion arrived and trace its huge cultural impact in art and architecture. But we have no real idea beyond conjecture of why it happened, the motives are lost.

In their own words

Stuart's approach in The Four Heavens is to celebrate the evidence that we do have - remembering that only a few decades ago we had pretty much nothing.

He takes us through a variety of royal family trees from different areas of the Mayan world, describing how we know about each individual (for example: an inscribed stone from such and such a place), and how they interacted with each other.

Stuart also includes lots of pictures of Mayan reliefs and Mayan characters (glyphs) throughout the book, which are fascinating. I enjoyed the chance to ponder the images myself, to see what I could make of it all.³

Three forms of the Mayan glyph 'ajaw' or 'holy lord', copied carefully from the author

High politics only

One of the weaknesses of the book is the author's strict focus on high politics, with not really much to say beyond who ruled over whom and in what order.

We don't hear anything about the ordinary Mayan and what life might have been like for them. Neither do we get to hear about any of the more lurid (to us) aspects of the Maya life.

For example when visiting Yucatan a while ago I remember being struck by a number of stone reliefs showing Mayan rulers in “bloodletting” ceremonies: such as passing a thorny rope through their own tongues. As something outside of the range of my own experience I would like to hear more about this. But beyond one or two matter-of-fact references Stuart says nothing.

I suspect he suffers from professional archaeologist syndrome, a condition that I am familiar with from my Aunt who is also a professional archeologist. If I ask her to speculate about anything - even just for fun - she will usually reply that there is no evidence and so there is nothing to say. He may also want to avoid typecasting the Maya as alien others rather than relatable people.

Whatever the reason the book comes across as a sober record of Mayan inscriptions, their translations and what we can say about them, rather than a story of the Maya per se - I had no feeling of empathy for any of the Mayans I met in the book.

Where did they go?

Of course the one big event that it is impossible to avoid speculating about is what happened to them? Or more specifically why did the Maya abandon their towns, often homes to tens of thousands of people, the product of millions of man hours of labour?

Here Stuart does share some thoughts, pointing to factors such as: a general drying up, increased warfare (even before the rains failed), or just deciding it is time for a change and moving on.

Interestingly he doesn't refer to deforestation and soil erosion as a cause, so maybe this idea has been rejected now.

The two things that struck me were:

When your environment dries out, you are in trouble whatever else is going on. If you don't have a surplus of food to support the elites and their fancy urban lifestyles, that way of life is going to change. Disruption, suffering and conflict would surely result, whether the situation was good or not beforehand.
The Mayan aristocracy (and people in general) seemed to be quite mobile with dynasties able to move from place to place while preserving their authority. This means that a dynasty would be more likely to move on rather than grimly cling to their ancestor tombs and ball courts, whatever the cost.

The show goes on

The other key point is that while the heartlands of the Maya saw their plazas and palaces fall empty, the Yucatan and the north saw growth and revival. Cities like Uxmal and Chichen Itza, which so many tourists flock to now, were actually constructed after the collapse and lasted a few hundred years more. Longer than most modern day cities have existed in either North or South America to date.

What I liked most about the book

The best thing about this book in my view is that it is possible to write it at all.

The fact that we can now piece together a chronicle of the Maya in something like their own words is remarkable, when just a few decades ago we understood almost none of this.

Conclusion

An overview of the history of the Mayan people, from the earliest records to their ultimate conquest by the Spanish, this brings us right up to date with the latest thinking and discoveries.

The dense overlapping record of kings, queens and their dynasties can be dry at times, but the flipside is that you get a factual no-nonsense account that puts the Mayan people at the heart of their story - back in control of their time.

Review by Noble Lord Webb

As a size comparison, this area is equivalent to 56 of London's Trafalgar Squares, lined up in a 4 by 14 rectangle. This wasn't a town because there is no evidence of people living here, but must have been some sort of massive community centre. ↩︎
The translation doesn't exaggerate, it really is that bad. In de Landa's own words: “Usaba también esta gente de ciertos caracteres o letras con las cuales escribían en sus libros sus cosas antiguas y sus ciencias, y con estas figuras y algunas señales de las mismas, entendían sus cosas y las daban a entender y enseñaban. Llallámosles gran número de libros de estas sus letras, y porque no tenían cosa en que no hubiese superstición y falsedades del demonio, se los quemamos todos, lo cual sintieron a maravilla y les dio mucha pena.” Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, sacada de lo escribió el padre fray Diego de Landa, XLI siglo de los maya - escritura de ellos ↩︎
The pictures were often confusing for me - it made me realise that we read pictures as well as reading words, and if you have no knowledge of a culture, understanding even a simple image is often challenging or even impossible. ↩︎

New history books in May 2026

2026-06-02T00:00:00Z

Here's the list from last month (history books published here in the UK in hardback): only nine but a wide range of topics. A couple I am curious about are:

This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England, by Nandini Das. I really enjoyed (and reviewed) Nandini Das' last book, so on that evidence I expect this one to be highly readable and insightful. It presents a history of 16th and 17th century England through the broad horizons of at least some of its denizens and visitors.
To Rule All Under Heaven: A History of Classical China, from Confucius to the First Emperor, by Andrew Seth Meyer. The blurb states that this is the first ever comprehensive history in English of China's warring states period, which must be an exageration, but certainly I have never read one, and would like to!

Click the book covers to see a zoomed in image and links to Amazon if you like to buy your books there.

The full list:

📕 Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe
📘 This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England
📔 Flick: A Brief History of Female Pleasure
📗 Babylon: The Legacy of the Greatest Metropolis of the Ancient World
📙 Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman World
📓 The Quest for El Dorado: Sir Walter Ralegh and the City of Gold
📒 Aphrodisia: Women, Sex and Pleasure in the Classical World
📙 To Rule All Under Heaven: A History of Classical China, from Confucius to the First Emperor
📘 Hammer of the Gods: King Olaf's Viking Conquest

The Coming Storm - review

2026-05-17T00:00:00Z

Our review of The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict and Warnings from History, by Odd Arne Westad, first published in March 2026.

If you want to understand the current increasingly dangerous international situation in a historical context (or if you have a history essay deadline coming up on the causes of World War I) The Coming Storm is a great starting point.

Succinct, stimulating and a little scary - recommended reading.

★★★★☆

In my professional life I come across people ruminating on the state of the world - usually with the objective of trying to make some money out of it. These cogitations often emphasise the parallels of the world now, to the world before World War II: with a hitleresque figure on the loose, willing to throw his weight around¹.

Ode Arne Westad in The Coming Storm emphasises a different parallel for the present day: the world before World War I, in the early 1900s. The problem right now as he sees it is not as simple as 'bad guy on the loose' but a shift to a 'multi-polar world' in which the possibility of a major conflict becomes much more likely - and this possibility (probability) of a serious conflict is grossly underestimated.

So if we are in a multipolar world who are the poles? In order of the amount of space given to them in the book they are:

China
United States
Russia
India
Turkey
Japan
EU
Brazil

This compares to the poles of the early twentieth century:

Britain
France
Germany
Russia
Austro-Hungary
Japan

In the early 1900s Arne Westad casts Britain as the declining hegemon (relatively speaking), leading to instability as other countries start jostling for position, with Germany in particular muscling in on the action. In the 2020s it is China which is rising to global prominence while the United States is looking over its shoulder with apprehension.

The superiority of the British nation was taken as a given... this superiority was seen as part of the natural order of things, created by the strength of their economy, their institutions, their empire, and their military, first and foremost the Royal Navy.

Ode Arne Westad, The Coming Storm

If you have a superiority complex, a growing sense of inferiority can be hard to manage.

Peacecraft

One of the key arguments of the book is that peace doesn't happen by accident. It is not the 'default' position, but is something that needs to be actively worked towards. And right now no-one is making much of an effort for peace at all...

Just like in the era before 1914, there is today a deeply held sense that Great Power war is, if not impossible, then highly unlikely. We need to get rid of this complacency.

Ode Arne Westad, The Coming Storm

Worryors

Another key point in the book is that war in general is bad, and that war between great powers is really bad.

As a reminder: millions of people would likely die. Your friends, family and neighbours could die. You might die. The author tells a story of the Great War 100 years ago in which just one battle (The Battle of the Somme) saw over 1 million casualties in five months.

To make the Battle of the Somme stats more human he focuses in on one Alfred Webb, who died in combat. The enormous scale of the battle was such that alongside Alfred Webb there were four other soldiers who died also called Alfred Webb. As an A Webb myself (with a brother who is another A Webb) this resonates. If you didn't die you were scarred for life, possibly physically, probably mentally.²

Great power war is to be avoided.

Flashpoints

With the backstory in place Arne Westad looks at a number of places where great power war might break out now, including Taiwan (US vs China), North Korea (US vs China), the Himalayas (India vs China), the Philippines (US vs China), Ukraine (Russia vs the EU?) and the Middle East (everyone vs everyone).

A China-US war over Taiwan is a real possibility at some point during the next decade... The combination of existing Great Power tensions, alongside the PRC's obvious aggressive intent... makes for an explosive mix...

Ode Arne Westad, The Coming Storm

Does he have a point?

It is clearly right to say now that the world is more unstable now than it was ten years ago, and that this instability will likely increase if other countries - in particular China - feel that they are able to challenge the United States and it is in their interests to do so.

It is also right that we shouldn't be complacent about peace: it doesn't necessarily happen by accident, as I can attest from the often exasperating behaviour between my two boys (aged 7 and 10).

However one difference between the potential great power conflicts of today and a hundred years ago is that the great powers now are much more spaced out around the globe. The capability to damage people from a distance has increased immeasurably since 1914 but surely (and I may be clutching at straws here) the fact that there is no realistic prospect of any one of Russia, the United States and China invading any other one is beneficial? Isolationism is a more realistic strategy now that it was then.

What is the book like to read?

The Coming Storm is short and punchy, with only three chapters and a couple of hundred pages. It is clearly meant to be read by ordinary people, maybe even busy people.

It feels something like a cross between a model undergraduate comparative history essay and a good old fashioned polemic, Thomas-Paine-style.

It is easy to read, systematically set out, and thought provoking.

The best bit

What I appreciated most about this book is that unlike many of the pundits and experts that I come across in my day-to-day life Arne Westad doesn't rely on personalities to describe the world. So rather than ascribing our current problems as the result of narcissistic egomaniacs such as Putin or Trump, he assigns them to longer term structures of power. This is much more satisfying to me and helps to explain why someone like Trump can be appealing in the first place (to United Statesians).

Conclusion

If you want to understand the world that we live in today in a historical context (or if you have a history essay deadline coming up on the causes of World War I) this is a great starting point.

Succinct, stimulating and a little scary - recommended reading.

The speaker usually means Putin but occasionally Trump. ↩︎
You sometimes hear the other side of this argument: that lots of soldiers actually quite liked the war because it was exciting and they got to do things they don't normally do such as drive tanks and kill people. In my view this is another point against war: we shouldn't be encouraging this sort of thing. ↩︎

New history books in April 2026

2026-05-04T00:00:00Z

A nice collection of books from last month (published in the UK in hardback) ranging across time and space. Three I am particularly attracted to are:

The Black Death: A Global History, by Thomas Asbridge. ...or at least as global as the Black Death appears to have got in the mid 14th century: Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. I have read this already and will be posting a review soon. It's an epic recounting but also deeply grounded in the personal experiences of the time.
The Scramble for America: How the United States Conquered a Continent, by Clement Knox. This is a story which I am vaguely aware of but would like to know the details better, particularly as the US seems to be pivoting to a more 19th century worldview.
The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya, by David Stuart. Another expansive American culture(s?) but one from much longer ago... I've long been fascinated by Central American history so looking forward to reading this one.

Click the book covers to see a zoomed in image and links to Amazon if you like to buy your books there.

The full list:

📗 Blood on the Wind: An Uncivil War in the Classic Maya Lowlands
📕 The Nuremberg Women: At the Trial That Brought the Nazis to Justice
📘 Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old
📔 The Lost Voices of Pompeii: The Final Day in Seven Lives
📗 The Black Death: A Global History
📙 Stalin's Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire
📓 Self-Help from the Middle Ages: A Journey Into the Medieval Mind
📒 Weimar Germany: Death of a Democracy
📙 The Scramble for America: How the United States Conquered a Continent
📘 Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece
📔 Offa: King of the Mercians
📗 Across Sicily with Garibaldi's Thousand: An Adventure in Landscape and Italian Memory
📕 Radicals: The Working Classes and the Making of Modern Britain
📘 Philosophy in the Reformation: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Volume 8
📔 The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya
📗 The Roman World War: From the Ides of March to Cleopatra’s Suicide

New history books in March 2026

2026-04-02T00:00:00Z

A veritable cornucopia¹ of new history books out last month, with no fewer than 18 new titles identified from my exhaustive scraping of the internet. Here are a few that I have my eye on with two of them actually on my shelf already:

How England Began: From Roman Britain to the Anglo-Saxons, by Nicholas J. Higham. I know the dark ages are not supposed to be dark, but surely this bit of the dark ages is genuinely shadowy. It is a gap in my knowledge anyway.
Seven Sisters: Captives and Rebels in Revolutionary Europe's First Family, by Veronica Buckley. "Let others wage war: thou, happy Austria, marry" (Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube). While it was a happy policy for the Hapsburgs it didn't always work out too well for the ladies entering into those marriages...
The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict and Warnings from History, by Odd Arne Westad. I am already half-way through this short and urgent book, which looks at the parallels between today's world and the world immediately before 1914 and the First World War. There are enough similarities for the author to sound the alarm.

Click the book covers to see a zoomed in image and links to Amazon if you like to buy your books there.

The full list:

📕 A History of France in 21 Women
📘 A Kingdom and a Village: A One-Thousand-Year History of Moscow
📔 A Woman's Work: A History of Motherhood
📗 Echoes of Ash: Life in Herculaneum
📙 Europe: A New History
📓 How England Began: From Roman Britain to the Anglo-Saxons
📒 Nuclear Weapons: An International History
📙 Rasputin: And the Downfall of the Romanovs
📘 Seven Sisters: Captives and Rebels in Revolutionary Europe's First Family
📔 Sir Walter Raleigh: A New History
📗 The African Kingdom of Gold: Britain and the Asante Treasure
📕 The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict and Warnings from History
📘 The Edge of Revolution: The General Strike That Shook Britain
📔 The First Ghetto: Venice and the Jews
📗 The Idea of China: A Contested History
📙 The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History
📔 The Radical Spanish Empire: How Paperwork Politics Remade the New World
📘 Venice and the Mongols: The Eurasian Exchange That Transformed the Medieval World

I'm not sure why but most cornucopias seem to be veritable ↩︎

Oliver Cromwell - review

2026-03-29T00:00:00Z

Our review of Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief, by Ronald Hutton, first published in August 2024.

The first two parts of Ronald Hutton’s planned three-part biography of Oliver Cromwell provide a vivid portrait of one of the most significant figures in British history.

★★★★☆

There is general agreement, first, that Cromwell is one of the great figures of British history, and yet also, second, that the nature of that greatness is shrouded in paradox

Ronald Hutton, quoting historian James Colin Davis

The historian Ronald Hutton, professor at the University of Bristol, has published the first two books in his planned three-book series on the life of Oliver Cromwell, which forms part of the Yale English Monarchs Series.

The first book, published in 2021, covers Cromwell’s life from birth in 1599 to 1647, following the end of the First English Civil War in 1646. This book includes Cromwell’s early life (for which there are few surviving records), his early political career (he became a Member of Parliament in 1628) and his formative years soldiering in the First English Civil War, rising from a cavalry captain to Lieutenant-General of Horse under Sir Thomas Fairfax. This book is battle heavy. During this period Cromwell was first and foremost a soldier, and that is how he established his reputation.

The second book was published in 2024 and picks up the story in 1647 with Oliver Cromwell and his family newly established in London and Cromwell resuming his career as a Member of Parliament. He is soon called back to military service for the short Second Civil War (1648) and campaigns in Ireland (1649-1650) and then Scotland (1650-1651).¹ It concludes in 1653, with Cromwell forcibly dissolving Parliament, at which point he has effectively established a military dictatorship over the whole of the British Isles. This book is more of a mixture of politics and warfare than the first. It only covers six years, but those are arguably the most significant and famous six years of Cromwell’s life. For the reasons set out below, I thought this was the stronger of the two books.

A reasonable question may be why I am reviewing two books in a three-book series. I have no particularly good answer, except that: (i) the third book is yet to be published; and (ii) I have just read these two books with the intention of reviewing them, mistakenly believing them to be part of a two-book, not three-book, series. Consider this a preliminary perspective on what will no doubt prove to be the author’s magnum opus.²

Historiography

Given that Cromwell is one of the most written-about people in British history, does Professor Hutton have anything new to say about him? The distinguishing characteristics of these books are a scepticism about taking Cromwell at his own word, and an insistence on perceiving Cromwell in the context of his own times, rather than as a reflection of contemporary politics. The central argument is that Oliver Cromwell was ‘more pragmatic and more devious than the one represented by his own speeches and writings’.

The historiography of Cromwell is a fascinating subject in its own right. For eighteenth and nineteenth century Whigs, Cromwell was a progressive hero. But whilst Cromwell’s impact may have inadvertently resulted in outcomes that we view today as positive (parliamentary democracy, religious tolerance and pluralism) they were hardly ever his objectives.

A bad man?

Devious, ruthless, manipulative and self-seeking

Ronald Hutton, describing Oliver Cromwell

Over the combined 727 pages of the two books, I was left with the impression that Ronald Hutton does not like Oliver Cromwell. Does that make his biography unreliable or unbalanced? I don’t think so, or perhaps only subtly or marginally. He clearly knows his subject matter inside out and is utterly meticulous and scrupulously fair in laying out all available evidence, particularly for the most contentious topics, such as the Siege of Drogheda.

Having said that, there are times when the author strains to interpret actions and events in the worst possible light for Cromwell. When Cromwell reforms the legal system in Ireland to provide more opportunities for Catholic tenants to seek redress from landlords, we are told that this was to ‘win their gratitude and make them more inclined to convert to Protestantism’, which struck me as a bit of a ‘damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t’ situation.

Cromwell’s remarkably successful military career is repeatedly ascribed to luck, whilst praise is begrudging – he is described ‘a competent trickster’ and we are told of his ‘methodical efficiency’. One of the most striking facts about Cromwell is that he first became a soldier at the age of 43, having had no previous professional military experience, and then went on to become one of the most successful soldiers in British history. The book could have done more to explain that success, apart from recourse to luck alone.

Whatever Cromwell’s many faults, he is a role model for a mid-life career change.

Cromwell’s publicity machine

The problem any biographer of Cromwell faces is the frequent lack of evidence, which Hutton himself admits on a number of occasions. That vacuum then provides the space for interpretations of the few sources there are in a more or less flattering way for Cromwell.

For example, there are repeated references in these books to the way in which the London press would exaggerate the role of Cromwell in military successes, whilst downplaying the role of others. But there is little (in fact, as far as I could tell, no) evidence linking Cromwell to any specific person in the London press – so instead we have vague references to ‘Oliver’s allies in the London press’ and his ‘publicity machine – whoever was running it’.

Elsewhere the author admits that ‘at no point is it clear how directly Oliver himself was involved in representations of himself in the press, and how much they were controlled by friends and well-wishers. What can be said is that the admiring portraits of his actions that were published would not have appeared so consistently had he not condoned or encouraged them’. ‘Condoning’ (or even ‘encouraging’) a positive portrayal hardly seems the most damning accusation to ever have been made against a politician.

The Elect

A natural holy warrior, a Puritan jihadi

Ronald Hutton, describing Oliver Cromwell

The author convincingly argues that it is misleading to see Cromwell through the prism of contemporary values.³ Past historians have made the mistake of casting Cromwell as a sort of proto-liberal, arguing for religious pluralism and tolerance. But the tolerance he advocated only applied to the type of Puritanism he favoured. He was never in favour of allowing tolerance to Roman Catholics or, for that matter, traditional Anglicans. He argued for the right of ‘independents’ to worship outside the official Church, but that was probably a pragmatic solution to the fact that most of the political elite and the country at large had little appetite for the type of religion he favoured. It is perfectly conceivable that if he could have found a way of making his brand Puritanism the ‘official’ version, his views on tolerance of religious minorities would have adjusted accordingly.⁴

Seen in this way, his career, and that of the army with which he was always closely associated, can appear as a successive process of narrowing down the ruling class to those who shared their own outlook.

First, he fought alongside Parliament to defeat the Royalists and therefore traditional Anglicanism.
Then, with Pride’s Purge in December 1648, the New Model Army prevented most of Parliament’s Presbyterians from taking their seats (leaving the so-called Rump Parliament).
Finally, on 20 April 1653, Cromwell and 40 musketeers forcibly dissolved a Parliament unwilling to bend to the wishes of the army independents.

At no point is there any indication that Cromwell questioned the legitimacy of what he was doing. In fact, one of the principal factors which may have led to Cromwell’s decision to forcibly dissolve Parliament in 1653 may have been a discussion he had with Parliamentary leaders at his home the preceding evening: in those discussions, Cromwell and fellow army independents asked how they could have assurances that new elections would only return the ‘right sort’ of persons (by which they meant those who agreed with them).

It may have been the failure of Parliamentary leaders to provide a convincing response to that question (realistically, how could a mechanism be devised which would exclude all Anglicans and Presbyterians from office?) that prompted Cromwell to take decisive action the following morning. In private letters, Cromwell was explicit in his belief that a ‘godly minority’ had the right to exclude from power an ‘ungodly majority’. Cromwell viewed the world ‘as divided into the followers and enemies of God’. It’s an object lesson on the dangers of the politically and morally self-righteous.

A pre-Enlightenment revolution

This book made me think about how Cromwell compares to later revolutionaries. Perhaps some historians have tried to interpret England’s overthrow of its King⁵ in the seventeenth century as a dry run for the later eighteenth century American and French revolutions. But what becomes clear from this book is that Oliver Cromwell was a product of a pre-Enlightenment Europe. Whilst Jefferson and Lafayette were inspired by Enlightenment ideas about human rights and freedom, Cromwell was more interested in his God and doing what he thought his God wanted him to do.⁶ To what extent other protagonists in the English Civil Wars were motivated by nascent ideas about human freedom and liberty is an interesting question.⁷

Summary of charges and defences

A poor weak creature, and not worthy of the name of a worm, yet accepted to serve the Lord and his people

Cromwell describing himself, in a letter to a fellow Puritan in Massachusetts

In the interests of fairness, I will attempt to summarise possible charges against Cromwell’s character and how I assess the weight of evidence for each:

Was Cromwell bloodthirsty and excessively harsh to opponents by the standards of his time? We are told that Cromwell 'had a savage streak in his nature which enjoyed inflicting death, injury or humiliation of those against whom he had taken'. Elsewhere we are told that Cromwell 'had always been a killer' and that his cavalry had 'long taken pleasure in killing'. Instinctively, I expect this may be right - but these claims are a bit speculative based on the sources available. Another interpretation is that he was just good at his job of being a soldier, which after all did involve killing people, and that tended to irritate people he was up against. There is a lack of substantial proof of him breaching the conventions of warfare which prevailed at the time. On the other hand, it can be shown that Cromwell was willing to treat enemies leniently when it was prudent (or expected) to do so. He was also strict about military discipline when it came to matters involving the interaction of his soldiers with civilians – he was willing to hang his own soldiers for pillaging locals. I had a feeling that if I was a neutral civilian, I would not necessarily want to encounter Cromwell and his soldiers, but that there may have been worse alternatives.
These books present an image of Cromwell as good at self-publicity and politically manipulative. As mentioned above, I am not convinced that Cromwell had an organised 'publicity machine' in London, but there are plenty of examples of his tendency to exaggerate his own role in military successes whilst downplaying the role of others. There are also occasions when he can be shown to have lied to or misled Parliament. Cromwell's way of speaking has a slightly annoying quality of feigned⁸ simplicity and piety (whilst obscuring points of contention) which smacks of hypocrisy to a modern audience.
Was Cromwell politically and religiously self-righteous with an inherent belief in his right to exclude from power those he disagreed with? Yes, I think after reading these two books I am thoroughly convinced that this was the case. Given that his entire belief system was based on the view that he belonged to a tiny predestined religious elect, perhaps it is not surprising that he was not a natural democrat.

What did I think of the books?

These books are good at describing and explaining the logistics of seventeenth century warfare and doing so in a way that is not tedious. As I mentioned earlier, one of the notable features of Cromwell’s life is his recurring success in battle. A significant contributing factor to that was that he was consistently supported by a Parliament with the means and willingness to supply him with the things he and his army needed to successfully prosecute his campaigns. The level of granular detail given also brings to life the day-to-day life of the soldiers fighting with Cromwell effectively. At times, their lack of food inspired me to take a quick break for a snack, lest I also suffer from the effects of malnutrition.

Another way in which the author manages to bring the world of seventeenth century Britain to life is in his detailed descriptions of the flora, fauna, sights, smells and sounds of the landscapes through which Cromwell and his armies passed.⁹ The natural world is clearly a particular passion for Ronald Hutton, and he manages to evoke this vividly. It is highly idiosyncratic for a history book (I struggle to think of another example which does this to the same extent), but I felt it was effective.

The writing style is highly distinctive – the author combines meticulous examination of source evidence (for instance, a detailed examination of Oliver Cromwell’s opinions on drainage of the Fens in book one) with the occasional unsubstantiated sweeping statement. Early in the first book he claims that the English ‘traditionally despised’ the Scottish people as ‘inferior’. Elsewhere, he makes a similarly sweeping claim about English views of the Welsh. He can also be entertainingly catty in his descriptions: Grey of Groby (a Parliamentarian soldier) is described as ‘a classic dim-witted posh boy: young, genial, weak-willed and hesitant’, whilst Sir John Hotham (another Parliamentarian soldier, later executed with his son by Parliament for treachery) is described as ‘rich, arrogant, conceited, duplicitous and fundamentally inept’.

I preferred the second book over the first book. The first book gets off to a slow start because of the paucity of surviving information for Cromwell’s early life. This is something we are repeatedly reminded of; after the first few dozen pages, I started to dread reading phrases such as ‘we don’t know’ and ‘it is not clear’ – a more general disclaimer would have sufficed for much of this section. The evidence and the book improve significantly, in lockstep, as Cromwell’s political and military career progresses.

In the second book, the author is more willing, or able, to step back and see the wood for the trees; provide some perspective and add some insights to his obvious exhaustive knowledge of the subject matter. If I was rating the two books individually, I’d give the first book three stars and the second book five stars, so four stars is an average for the two. Overall, the two books together are highly rewarding and I’m looking forward to the third.

Conclusion

The Cromwell that emerges from these two books is a much more slippery character than I had previously appreciated. With some minor caveats, I found the characterisation of Oliver Cromwell in these books entirely plausible. The author combines exacting standards of scholarship with a unique writing style to create what was, for me, one of the most entertaining and enlightening historical biographies I have read.

Regarding the Scottish campaign, it is noted that ‘Scotland’s acceptance of Charles II had cost it very dear: for the only time in its entire history, it had been properly conquered by the English, and in the process had probably lost around 10 per cent of its entire adult made population, a casualty rate exceeding that of any European state in either the First or Second World War’. Having a quick look at the Wikipedia pages on casualties in the First or Second World Wars, I think this is debatable, but I am not qualified to comment on the accuracy of this claim. ↩︎
I will certainly read the third book when it comes out and may review that one separately when it does. ↩︎
A useful piece of advice for many modern historians. ↩︎
A counterargument would point to Oliver Cromwell’s encouragement of Jews to move to England, which perhaps indicates a more general willingness to tolerate alternative religions. I expect this will be addressed in book three. ↩︎
The point is made that Charles I was also king of Scotland and Ireland at the time, but that the Scots and Irish didn’t get any say in the decision to execute him. ↩︎
This was a motivation which Cromwell shared with many of those involved in the events of this era, albeit religious motivations could lead in different directions. Ronald Hutton points out that Charles I was strongly driven by his commitment to traditional Anglicanism - his refusal to compromise on some of his own beliefs probably contributed to his execution. ↩︎
The Blazing World by Jonathan Healey (reviewed by me elsewhere on this website) notes that many involved on the Parliamentary side in the English Civil Wars were influenced by deeply held beliefs about the constitution and the accountability of those in power to those they ruled. ↩︎
As in, it sounds feigned to a modern audience – like many successful politicians, Cromwell probably believed his own propaganda. ↩︎
The author admits that there is little indication that Cromwell himself had any interest in the natural world. ↩︎

We the People - review

2026-03-20T00:00:00Z

Our review of We the People: A History of the US Constitution, by Jill Lepore, first published in September 2025.

Examining the US constitution and how it has been amended (or more, often not amended) We the People is the product of enormous and meticulous research.

It is also very timely, given the many stresses and strains which America‘s system of checks and balances is currently being subjected to. Unfortunately, I found it a bit of a slog. This is one for American history and politics buffs rather than casual observers.

★★★☆☆

Asked in 2025 whether he had a duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution Trump said, 'I don't know.' >>> Jill Lepore, We the People

This book was a birthday present from our website founder, Anthony Webb. It's quite a departure for me. I admit to knowing very little about American history. So, it's good to get a bit of exposure to an area of history about which I know little.

The Amendments Project

The book is the product of the Amendments Project (of which the Jill Lepore is the Project Director) described on its website as a 'searchable archive of the full text of nearly every amendment to the U.S. Constitution proposed in Congress between 1789 and 2022 (more than 11,000 proposals); records of petitions introduced in Congress between 1789 and 1949 that propose, support, or oppose constitutional amendments (more than 9,000 petitions); and thousands of proposed amendments that never made it to Congress'. Of those thousands of proposed amendments, thirty-three have been proposed by the United States Congress and sent to the states for ratification, and twenty-seven have been ratified by the states and now form part of the Constitution. Of those twenty-seven successful amendments, one amendment (the twenty-first) repeals the eighteenth amendment (prohibiting the manufacturing or sale of alcohol).

The Amendments Project states that 'since the 1970s, the U.S. Constitution has become effectively un-amendable, chiefly due to widening political polarization'. A central contention of the book appears to be that the Constitution is too difficult to amend. To consider this, it's worth taking a moment to consider the process for amending the Constitution, which I didn't understand prior to reading this book.

How to amend the constitution

The amendment process is set out in Article V of the Constitution. It's a two-stage process:

Firstly, an amendment must be proposed. This can be done in one of two ways:

by the U.S. Congress, with the approval of a two-thirds majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives; or
by a national convention, which can be requested by the legislature of two-thirds of the states. This option has never been used.

Secondly, a proposed amendment is sent to the states for ratification. Ratification can either be from:

the legislatures of three-fourths of the states; or
approval by state ratifying conventions in three-fourths of the states. The only amendment to be ratified by this method is the twenty-first amendment repealing prohibition.

So, essentially, amendment has almost always followed option 'a' for both proposal and ratification (i.e. proposed by U.S. Congress followed by ratification by state legislatures).

Under Article V, one provision is unamendable (without the consent of all states): equal representation in the Senate (i.e. each state gets two senators, regardless of the population of the state).

Original sin

For me, the most interesting parts of the book were the opening chapters exploring the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. I enjoyed the insights into American society at that time and the Founding Fathers.

Slavery looms large in American history, which will come as a surprise to nobody. The cracks in American politics were there from the start. Vermont's first constitution, drafted in 1777, prohibited slavery. But the right to own slaves was passionately defended by the Southern states at the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787. Slavery infused the public and private lives of many of the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson had multiple children with his slave, Sally Hemings. Those children were born into slavery. The idea of someone's child also being their slave struck me as peculiar. But apparently it was quite common in certain circles. In fact, Sally's own mother was her father's slave, and Sally was her father's slave.¹

After a lot of back and forth and heated arguments, the 1787 Constitution eventually permitted slavery, without actually using that word (which was considered to be too much of a stain), because the alternative would have been the Southern states seceding from the Union (which they tried to do during the Civil War when the issue came up again). The Constitution also contained the very strange 'three-fifths rule', by which slaves counted as 'three-fifths' of a person for the purposes of the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives, even though those 'persons' had no right to exercise votes themselves. In this way, the Southern states got to have their cake (slavery) and eat it (over-representation in the House of Representatives). If nothing else, that proves the power of obstinacy as a negotiating tactic.

What is the point of a constitution?

A text is made of woven letters; a textile is made of woven threads

Jill Lepore, We the People

Two themes which come from the book are that the author thinks the Constitution is too difficult to amend (she tells us that 'Article V hasn't worked since 1971'); and that she is opposed to (or at least sceptical about) 'originalism' (which is a theory of constitutional interpretation which seeks to understand the intention of the persons who wrote and ratified the Constitution) and instead favours the idea of the Constitution as a 'living organism'².

At times, I would have liked the book to have dug a little deeper into some of the questions which lay beneath its surface. For example, what is the purpose of a written constitution and 'fundamental' law (i.e. laws that cannot be amended except by a supermajority)? It's a question the book never addresses.

A fair defence might be that this is a book of history, rather than political science. Nonetheless, some of the themes which are raised by the book are difficult to properly assess without posing some of those questions. For example, if the idea of fundamental law is to make some laws more difficult to change than others, then surely changing a constitution should be difficult?

Antonin Scalia (a Supreme Court judge 1986 to 2016) said the whole purpose of the Constitution was to prevent change. On a purely logical level, doesn't he have a point? Plenty of fair criticisms can be made of the people and process by which the original Constitution was drafted and agreed – in particular, the persons doing so were unrepresentative of the world they lived in. No women, black men, or indigenous Americans were present at the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787.

But that raises a fundamental dilemma which the book never addresses. If it is unfair for one generation to create laws which bind a future generation, then can a written constitution ever be legitimate? The UK has statutory provisions still in force which date back to the thirteenth century,³ but those can be repealed or amended at any time by an Act of Parliament, as the UK is one of the few countries in the world which does not have a written constitution. I would have been interested to hear what the author thought the value of a written constitution is and how such a document can have democratic legitimacy.

Constitutional politics

It seems history matters to this Court only when it is convenient

Justice Sonia Sotomayor reacting to Trump v. United States

American constitutional history is a window into the strange world of American politics. American politics may be polarised, but certain ideas enjoy broad cross-party appeal – for example, that imposing your political views on others through Constitutional amendment and/or interpretation is a good idea.

An American political novice might ask why people who favour or oppose something (for example, guns, abortion) don't merely seek to pass (or oppose the passing) of state or federal laws which favour their own perspective. But for the politically [or morally? ed] motivated American, of left or right, having their own opinion enshrined in the Constitution or validated by the Supreme Court always appears to be the more attractive option.

What did I think of the book?

We have at last so far got through the wearisome business of amendments, we may never hear any more of it

Benjamin Goodhue, delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention, 23 August 1787

The above quote came to mind as I made my way through 581 pages of petitions and sub-committees. The opening of the book, dealing with the founding of the United States, is very interesting, as was parts of it dealing with the Civil War period, but I found some of the other sections a bit long-winded and digressive – there's a lot about the constitutional history of Hawai'i which, whilst interesting, might have benefited from being more succinct.⁴

The author tells us that the 'countless numbers' of constitutional amendments which have failed 'count for rather a lot'. They are certainly a fascinating perspective on the debates which have raged about the Constitution from its inception. One proposal for an amendment of the Constitution would have led to the development of an 'Intergalactic AMERICA'. I expect this idea would find favour with the current administration.

Conclusion

The heavens turned. Wars were won and lost. Constitutions were written and rewritten. A republic became an empire and once more a republic. The grass grew, the sun rose, the seas spread, and the waters ran red with blood.

Jill Lepore, We the People⁵

This book has much to recommend it. It is obviously the product of enormous and meticulous research. It is also very timely, given the many stresses and strains which America's system of checks and balances is currently being subjected to. I think Anthony bought this for me hoping that it would be a ringing endorsement of an idea and document under threat of neglect. Strangely, the author's perspective on the Constitution is quite sceptical, in respect of both its origins and its subsequent resistance to change.

Sally Haming's father was John Wayles. He had a legitimate daughter called Martha Wayles who married Jefferson, which made her Sally's half-sister. ↩︎
Unless I missed it, I don't believe the book ever provides an explanation of what this means. I suspect an 'originalist' would argue that it means judges inventing constitutional rights depending on their own politics. I would have been interested to hear the author's counterargument to that. ↩︎
The oldest English statute still in force is the Statute of Marlborough (1267) which I am informed by ChatGPT is 'older than Downton Abbey'. ↩︎
The author uses the story of a quilt made by Queen Liliʻuokalani of Hawai'i whilst imprisoned, reflecting on aspects of Hawai'ian history, as a framework for this section of the book, which I did feel was an effective device. ↩︎
The author is keen on the occasional rhetorical flourish, which is hopefully evident from some of the quotes given here. ↩︎

The Wolf Age - review

2026-03-08T00:00:00Z

Our review of The Wolf Age: The Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons and the Battle for the North Sea Empire, by Tore Skeie, first published in October 2021.

A compelling and engaging romp through the intertwined English and Scandinavian histories at the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Illuminating a time which has always been murky for me, it also brings to the fore one of England’s most underrated kings: Æthelred the Resilient.

★★★★★

In my children’s primary school the virtue of resilience is explicitly encouraged.¹ Picking yourself up, dusting yourself down and having another go is indeed important in life. However one area where they are missing a trick in moulding the youth of London is with their resilience role models, who tend to be over-achieving astronauts, scientists and other such alienating figures.

I would suggest instead that kids are taught to follow the example of Æthelred the Unready, who emerges from the pages of The Wolf Age: The Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons and the Battle for the North Sea Empire by Tore Skeie as an unexpectedly inspiring historical figure.

Æthelred was thrust unexpectedly onto the throne of Anglo-Saxon England in 978 when his elder brother King Edward the Martyr (described as a “quick-tempered, moody and unstable” 15 year old) was “spontaneously” stabbed to death by a group of thanes. Æthelred ruled for the subsequent 35 years, and, despite being spectacularly unsuccessful in all that time, losing battle after battle, plans going awry on land and on sea, he never gave up, kept coming back time and time again, before dying peacefully in his bed of an unidentified wasting illness aged 48.

If you can meet with disaster after disaster...

Let’s dig into a timeline of that uplifting record:

In the decade of the 990s he endured losing not one but two large armies, the first slaughtered, the second ran away. Constant Viking raiding went on more or less unchecked. He made two massive payoffs in silver (3.5 tonnes then 5 tonnes) to get the Vikings to go away. But crucially, he didn’t give up.
Undaunted, over the next decade of the 1000s Æthelred worked hard to build up England’s fortifications, again in the context of continual attacks, but to no effect. He lost two large armies once more (with his family members among the dead). Even worse he lost a brand new fleet of 200 ships built at enormous effort. This was before the fleet had even made contact with the enemy: two of his chiefs attacked each other while they were waiting for the Vikings to show up. Another monster bribe of 12 tonnes of silver was paid.
In the 1010s, despite his disastrous record Æthelred didn’t give up. He paid more bribes, including successfully enticing the Viking Number Two (Thorkell the Tall) over to his side. Unfortunately this didn’t help Æthelred resist the largest Viking invasion yet, now aiming to conquer England completely. Æthelred made a strategic retreat to his in-laws in Normandy. In a rare piece of good luck, the Viking leader Sweyn Forkbeard died just as he was about to go and collect the English crown, and Æthelred launched a lightning invasion from France, successfully reclaiming the throne.

In the end Æthelred fell sick and left his son Edmund Ironside to fight his battles for him (with much greater success). Despite Æthelred’s many defeats his enemies could never finish him off, but his illness could and Æthelred finally died on 23rd April 1016.

Æthelred the Resilient

Resilience is all very well when you are talented. But it is even more impressive when you are consistently unequal to the occasion.

Despite 35 years of constant failure in his job as king to keep his people safe, Æthelred’s resilience and self-belief never wavered.

Which is why I am starting a petition² to posthumously rename “Æthelred the Unready” to “Æthelred the Resilient”, which is step one in my plan to make the study of his life mandatory for all primary school children in the UK.

The saintly plunderer

The other main character in this story also has an undeserved reputation: Saint Olaf, credited with bringing Christianity to Norway. Whereas Æthelred has been undervalued by posterity, Olaf has experienced the reverse with highly undeserved praise. While he did indeed play a role in bringing The Church to Norway - albeit motivated by greed and self interest - he also brought murder, rape and destruction to Norway and everywhere else with a coast line, including England, France, Portugal, and (then Muslim) Southern Spain.

What’s in the book?

The narrative of the book covers the reign of Æthelred from 978 to a little while after his death in 1016, however the story is told on a much broader canvas covering the “North Sea world”: Scandinavia and England, with a bit of Normandy and Iceland thrown in too, and guest appearances from Spain and Portugal.

One cannot really understand the history of England in this period without understanding Scandinavian history, and one cannot really understand Scandinavian history without understanding English history.

Tore Skeie, The Wolf Age

For example “Saint Olaf” would not have been able to fund his takeover of the territory of what is now Norway without the silver he had pilfered and extorted from England. And his ‘modern’ vision for a strong kingship - with a more obedient set of subjects - came from role models in Christian Europe, where a monotheistic religion matched nicely with a mono-rex style government. There’s only room for one big guy and you better do what he says!

England was more obviously impacted by the Vikings as it was pummelled and plundered remorselessly for 35 years straight before being taken over by the Viking king Cnut.

Skeie is also keen to point out the similarities between English and Scandinavian societies of the time - and indeed broader European societies - where power went hand-in-hand with a ruthless dominating brutality and warring with neighbours was just what kings did. What made the Vikings special was not necessarily their bad behaviour but the fact that they were so good at it.

Style guide

The Wolf Age is a breezy read: a gripping narrative makes the years fly by.

Skeie also nicely mixes in a bit of context every now and again which varies the pace nicely as well as providing some behind-the-scenes insight. For example there is a section on ‘Viking religion’, a bit on Viking kingship, what it is like to be a foot soldier in a 10th century marauding army³, a section on Viking soldiers and their equipment⁴, and so on.

While the focus is on readability and engagement the author does also - I think! - try to follow the sources. They point out where evidence for what happened is lacking and where people disappear and reappear in the historical record.

Any problems?

The only thing I found a bit frustrating was that the sources that Skeie usese are often obscured. For example every now and again Skeie will set out a direct quote, such as:

King, I have heard that your men cast bodies in great heaps,
far from the ships they turned Ringmere Heath red with blood

A Viking skald (presumably Sigvat?) recounting ‘Saint’ Olaf’s victory at the Battle of Ringmere in a Norwegian mede hall

...but it is left to the reader to figure out the details of where the text comes from. So I think the above quote comes from a person called Sigvat but this relies on my own detective work and the accuracy of Wikipedia.

I guess this is in keeping with the popular history book vibe, but it left me feeling adrift at times: if I hear a voice echoing down to me from the past I would like to know who is speaking.

What I most appreciated

What I enjoyed most about the book was the way it carries you along with the story in all its bloody excitement, but without at all revelling in the violence:

In the year 1007, he [Olaf Harraldsson] is said to have left his home town and, like many others of his standing, embarked on an honourable career of violence, robbery and destruction.

Tore Skeie, The Wolf Age, describing ‘Saint’ Olaf’s first forays into the wider world

...and also without cheering for one side or the other, just giving you a strong sense of the mad compelling logic of the decades-long slaughter.

In short Skeie masterfully steers us between the whirlpool of blinkered anachronism and the rocks of abject relativitivity.

Conclusion

A compelling and engaging romp through the intertwined English and Scandinavian histories at the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Illuminating a time which has always been murky for me, it also brings to the fore one of England’s most underrated kings: Æthelred the Resilient.

I don’t remember this from my own primary school days, where arithmetic tended to get more air time instead. ↩︎
Or at least I will be starting a petition as soon as I can source the 5 email addresses, as required by the UK government petition website that I need to get it off the ground. ↩︎
Apparently it was pretty boring most of the time, traipsing around in small gangs trying to get hold of food for you and the rest of the army. ↩︎
I was surprised to find out that (a) the Viking raiders represented only the ‘upper class’ of their societies (with the peasant farmers staying back home) and that at the same time (b) most of them were armed with spears not swords because swords were ‘expensive high status weapons’. Maybe you need more training to fight with a sword too, because surely most Vikings would have been able to afford splurging on a nice sword with their ill-gotten gains? ↩︎

New history books in February 2026

2026-03-03T00:00:00Z

A slightly sparser list of new history books this month (Feb 2026, in hardback in the UK). The two that I am curious to find out a bit more about are:

Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity, by Frank Dikötter. The thesis being that the Communists in China were no different to their Nationalist Guomingdang opponents, so there was no 'moral' component to their victory. Having not yet read the book I am not yet convinced!
The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin's Greatest Enemy, by Josh Ireland. Another compelling / horrific movie plot from the past. I expect an exciting, made for cinema style book.

Click the book covers to see a zoomed in image and links to Amazon if you like to buy your books there.

The full list:

📕 Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity
📘 A Queer Inheritance: Alternative Histories in the National Trust
📔 Members Behaving Badly: A History of Britain in 52 Parliamentary Rogues
📗 The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London
📙 The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin's Greatest Enemy
📓 A Spy Amongst Us: Daniel Defoe's Secret Service and the Plot to End Scottish Independence
📒 Mad Tom's Rising: The Revolutionary Mystic Sir Wiliam Courtenay and the Last Battle Fought on English Soil
📙 The Great Resistance: The 400-Year Fight to End Slavery in the Americas
📘 Athena's Sisters: Reclaiming the Women of Classical Athens
📔 Saving Byzantium: The Struggle to Salvage an Empire
📗 Runes: A Concise History

On Pedantry - review

2026-02-22T00:00:00Z

Our review of On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All, by Arnoud S. Q. Visser, first published in November 2025.

A history of anti-intellectualism in the western world from the Greeks onwards, Visser makes this potentially dry subject entertaining by focussing on the character and caricatures of the pedant.

Apart from a minor grammatical error on page 237, I found On Pedantry a worthwhile and enjoyable read ;-)

★★★☆☆

Of splendid books I own no end
But few that I can comprehend.
I cherish books from various ages
And keep the flies from off the pages.

Sebastian Brant, The Ship of Fools (1494)

The rhyme reciting bibliophile quoted above is one of the many Western European (and North American) pedants that Arnoud Visser introduces to us in On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-It-All.

One interesting fact about this bibliophile buffoon is that he is the very first nitwit out of the over 100 different types of fools that Brant included in his hugely influential book, which aimed to catalogue every type of nincompoop. Clearly the literary pedant - who loved his books dearly but never read any of them - was expected to strike a chord with readers 500 years ago. As indeed he does with me today!

What is a pedant?

But is he really a pedant? I don’t want to come across as pedantic myself of course, but I would have labelled him as an idiot more than anything else, or perhaps a chump.

When I was a child for example, my mum, whenever she felt I was winning an argument on a technicality, would say to me with great relish: “You pedant!” suggesting that for her pedantry meant priggishly insisting on minor points and willfully ignoring what really matters.

However, as Visser tells us, the definition of what a pedant is has shifted over the past thousand years or so: but at the heart of the accusation of pedantry is someone who is considered insufferably intellectual in one way or another.

Which means that this book is fundamentally a history of anti-intellectualism, told through the lens of various eggheads who got up other people’s noses.

Grumbling Greeks

So where did it all start? Visser kicks off with the ancient Greeks and specifically the Athenians, reminding us that despite all the philosophers “it was also a culture with strong anti-intellectual sentiments”.

“Sophists” in particular were a target of the brainbox bashers. Tutors to the very rich, sophists would train them in the arts of rhetoric and argument. However their financial motivation and potentially slippery attitude to right and wrong was problematic.

The play ‘The Clouds’ written by Aristophanes in 423 BCE humorously riffs on these attitudes.

Cloudy reasoning

The story of the play follows a young man called Pheidippides who has been sent to the sophist ‘Thinking Institute’ by his father, in order to become sufficiently skilled at argument to get dad off the hook for his mounting debts.

The plan is initially a success, and Pheidippides comes up with an ingenious yet specious logic to get out of paying up “based on the ambiguous naming of the final days of the month on which the debts were due”.

Unfortunately Pheidippides doesn’t stop there and also beats his father up (I’m not totally sure why), devising another argument to justify this shocking and unsettling behaviour.

Heated debate

Ultimately the father, also under the influence of the Sophists, goes slightly mad and denies the existence of the gods, before coming to his senses and burning the Thinking Institute to the ground.

The Sophists in the play, while ludicrous, are also a subversive and potentially dangerous element in Athenian society. Knowledge is a dangerous thing, if not anchored by upright morals.

Reproachful Romans

The journey through Western civilization continues with the Romans who had a love-hate relationship with intellectuals. Visser notes that:

In the first century a range of emperors, including Nero, Vespasian and Domitian, had issued decrees expelling philosophers from Rome, or even Italy as a whole.

Arnoud S. Q. Visser, On Pedantry

Critical Christians

Then onto the middle ages where learning went hand in hand with Christianity. Tenth century intellectualism had at its core an intimate master-student relationship: correspondence between students and masters is apparently full of dramatic protestations of affection. “Countless tears are wept, jealous suspicions thrown about, sweet wishes uttered.”

When a new school of thought, scholasticism, emerged in the twelfth century, based on logic rather than practical ethics, the “old qualities of charismatic masters... came to be seen as pompous, verbose pedantry.”

Horrendous Humanists

On to the Renaissance, where uppity humanists, were associated with sexual deviancy and sodomy despite the fact that “teachers and students [in Florence] represent only 0.6% of cases in the records of the criminal tribunal for sodomy.” These derogatory accusations, Visser tells us, stemmed from the nobility who felt threatened and affronted by these free-thinking jumped-up big-mouthed smart-alecs.

Founding Philistines

The last part of the book heads over to North America where anti-intellectualism is present from the inception of the United States: Thomas Paine chose to write the foundational text “The Rights of Man” in a deliberately home-spun and plain-speaking style.

Fifty years later the 1828 presidential election pitted the intellectually inclined incumbent John Quincy Adams against Andrew Jackson, a “barely literate” war hero. The electorate had just been expanded: you no longer needed to own property to vote. And some of the new voters at least felt that literary dexterity was a disqualification for high office. “I never found a dictionary man who was not half a fool - I’m for Hickory [Andrew Jackson], I believe” one farmer reportedly said. Andrew Jackson won the election.

The last chapter homes in on pedantic professors in the twentieth century who, when negatively portrayed in the first half of the century, were shown as authoritarian bullies, and then often as pathetic misfits in the second half of the century, as their purchasing power parity declined.

Style guide

On Pedantry is probably the most readable history of anti-intellectualism that you will come across. Visser has a dry sense of humour and is always on the lookout for a good anecdote. I liked the way he started each chapter with a dictionary definition, a tongue in check homage to the pedantic dictionary men and women.

That said, it is not really a page turner and as a reader you have to put a certain amount of effort in to stay with it.

Conclusion

What I liked most about the book was the way it contextualised the anti-intellectualism that we come across nowadays.

By presenting a long history of anti-intellectualism essentially as a power struggle between competing world views (in which the accusation of pedantry is often just a handy weapon) it helped me to think about the power struggles of today from a new angle. It also gave me a new way to think about the power struggles with my mum two or three decades ago!

New history books in Jan 2026 (and Dec 2025)

2026-02-08T00:00:00Z

I have combined January and Decemeber to give myself a break over xmas. However it turns out that there was not much out in December anyway and a much greater number in January so it worked out well. A few that caught my eye are:

Exit Stalin: The Soviet Union As a Civilization, 1953-1991, by Mark B. Smith. Charting the attempt to fulfill the promise of socialism, this looks like a balanced and insightful account.
First Kings: Forged by Vikings in England and Norway, by R. A. J. Waddingham. The second history book written by my now retired ex-boss: I watch his progress with considerable interest. Is it any good? I hope so!
Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent, by Kim Bowes. I'm always curious about the Roman have-nots, and the have-not-muches - what was life really like?
Becoming Arab: The Formation of Arab Identity in the Medieval Middle East, by Yossef Rapoport. This book addresses a question I have never really been able to get a handle on - what does it mean to be Arab and when did people switch over from what it was they indentified as previously?

Click the book covers to see a zoomed in image and links to Amazon if you like to buy your books there.

The full list:

📕 The Six Loves of James I
📘 Money and the Making of the American Revolution
📔 The Desire for Syria in Medieval England
📗 The Indian Caliphate: Exiled Ottomans and the Billionaire Prince
📕 Exit Stalin: The Soviet Union As a Civilization, 1953-1991
📘 A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars
📔 The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and Its Empires
📗 The Black Cross: A History of the Baltic Crusades
📙 Worlds of Islam: A Global History
📓 First Kings: Forged by Vikings in England and Norway
📒 Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent
📙 The Killing Age: How Violence Made the Modern World
📘 The Man Who Stopped the Sultan: Gabriele Tadino and the Defence of Europe
📔 Prague: The Heart of Europe
📗 Becoming Arab: The Formation of Arab Identity in the Medieval Middle East
📕 Berenice: Queen in Roman Judea
📘 Borneo: The History of an Enigma

Rhyme and Reason - review

2025-12-19T00:00:00Z

Our review of Rhyme and Reason: A Short History of British Poetry, by Mark Forsyth, first published in October 2025.

A beginner friendly tour of the history of English poetry, and therefore a tour of English cultural history too.

If you like me you appreciate poetry in an abstract sense, but find it tedious and obscure in practice, this is the book for you: it succeeds in turning the impenetrable into the engaging.

★★★★☆

Hail-stones as big as eggs apace down fell,
And some much bigger, as I hear some tell:
Who took them up as they lay on the ground, And measured, they were found eight inches round.
~
And fourteen ounces two of them did weigh,
As one who weighed them unto me did say:
It is so strange, and yet so very true,
The like before no mortal ever knew.

From “A Ballad of a Strange and Wonderful Storm of Hail which fell in London on the 18th of May 1680, which hurt several men, killed many birds and spoiled many trees; with other strange accidents, the like never before known in England.”

We live in a poetic desert. As Mark Forsyth observes in Rhyme and Reason: a short history of poetry and people (for people who don’t usually read poetry): nowadays we only recite poems at weddings and funerals and even then we say them wrong.

But this is an anomaly, from an historical perspective. For most of the last few hundred years poetry was an integral part of the lives of the majority of British people¹. Youngsters would declaim lengthy poems by heart, grown men would weep at poetry recitals, and news reports (in the 17th century) would often be delivered in poetic form - such as the report on the freak hailstorm above which “killed many birds”.

Let's start at the very beginning

Forsyth leads us from the desert to the green pastures of the past when poetry flourished, all starting with The Book of the Duchess in 1368 which was written by a minion of the royal powerhouse John of Gaunt, named Geoffrey Chaucer, in commemoration of John’s recently deceased and much missed wife.

The poem which starts thusly:

I have gret wonder, be this lighte,
How that I live, for day ne nighte
I may nat sleepè well nigh noght,
I have so many an idle thoght
Purely for defaute of slepe

...is special for:

Being the first poem written in English from which you can trace an unbroken line to the rest of English poetry.
Taking a rhyming French verse structure and giving it in addition a de-dum de-dum de-dum de-dum rhythm.

There had been poems in England before this (Beowulf springs to mind) but “they didn’t lead to anything” we are told, so it was Chaucer who kicked it all off.

Poems for the ages

We are then taken step by step through the changing tastes of the English public as consumers of poetry, and the changing types of English people who consumed them.

The idea of this book is reasonably simple. In each age I try to find the typical consumer of poetry. I try to establish who they were, what class they were from, and in what precise physical circumstances they got their poems. Then I try to establish why they might have liked or disliked the poetry. Then I give you a couple of poems.

Mark Forsyth, accurately summarising his book Rhyme and Reason

One of the aims of the book is to help you (me) the reader understand how to read poems, to find the rhythm of them. In this I felt it succeeded brilliantly.

Personally I felt like I had just the right level of knowledge to get the most out of this book, which is almost total ignorance. Alongside this ignorance I’m also quite dissatisfied with my own inability to appreciate in poems what other people seem to find so special.

When you know the notes to sing

Forsyth is the perfect guide for this sort of willing ignoramus, and will often (for example) mark in bold the syllables that need stressing in a poem to get you started.

I grieve and dare not show my discontent;
I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate;
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant;
I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate.
I am, and not; I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.

Queen Elizabeth I, aged 46, whose marriage negotiations had just recently broken down.

This sort of hand holding for the reader is great and something I think should be incorporated into more poetry publications. Paradise Lost with Stressed Syllables in Bold may not become an instant best seller but you never know these days with the TikTok crowd.

Through a glass, clearly

Forsyth is also refreshingly plain speaking in how he views the poems and poets of the past, removing them from their pedestals, and bringing them down to earth.

For example when introducing us to the most popular poet by far in the eighteenth century, Lord Byron, and his first blockbuster narrative poem, title: Childe Harold, Forsyth opines as follows:

The odd thing about Childe Harold is that nothing actually happens. Childe Harold is deep and brooding and alienated, but he just looks at stuff, and moves on. The whole thing, today, feels like being shown somebody’s holiday snaps, which is a tedious business, even if the person showing you is really intense about it.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is boring.

Mark Forsyth, Rhyme and Reason

By making ‘great poems’ less intimidating, Forsyth makes them more accessible, and so more enjoyable.

The focus of the book is on poems that were read at the time and while this overlaps reasonably well with our current canon of "great poetry", it also surfaces more poets and poems that circulated widely in the past but have been forgotten nowadays - such as patriotic female second world war poets writing from the home front.

What I got out of the book

After I finished the book I felt I had got:

A history of what poems English (sometimes British) people were reciting and listening to over time - and why poetry died out in the twentieth century.
Light hearted but effective instructions on how to read poems, and find their rhythm.
A taster menu for a bunch of poems and poets for you to look up yourself later, if you want.

Anything not to like?

The best parts of this book are where the author’s personality and enthusiasm shines through.

The one or two bits that jarred with me were also where the author’s personality shines through, with an occasional “we hate the French” Dad’s Army style humour that made me cringe. But thankfully this only pops up on a few occasions.

Conclusion

The author guides you gently by the hand through the history of English poetry, and therefore a central part of English cultural history too.

If you like poetry in an abstract sense, but find it tedious and obscure in practice, Rhyme and Reason is the book for you: it succeeds in turning the commonplace into the compelling.

Presumably this is also the case for other European people too but Forsyth’s is focused on Britain (and mostly England). ↩︎

An Accidental History of Tudor England - review

2025-12-12T00:00:00Z

Our review of An Accidental History of Tudor England: From Daily Life to Sudden Death, by Steven Gunn, Tomasz Gromelski, first published in June 2025.

My history book of the year. I would enthusiastically recommend this as a marvellous Christmas present for anyone interested in Tudor England, accidental death, or both.

★★★★★

Disclaimer: the reviewer is an ex-student of Professor Steven Gunn.

The English were, historically, good at paperwork. As a solicitor myself, this is something which I greatly admire. By the late Middle Ages, England had, by European standards, a relatively sophisticated system of investigating and recording deaths; in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, that system was increasingly codified into statute. In 1487, an Act of Parliament was passed which commanded coroners to hand in their inquest reports to the assize judges, who brought them back to the Court of King's Bench in Westminster where they were filed.

This was then followed by an Act in 1510 which ordered coroners to make sure they held inquests on all sudden deaths, not just homicides, and do so speedily so that bodies would not lie 'longe above ground unburyed to the great noyaunce of the Kynges leage people'.

Getting the facts straight

So, if you lived in Tudor England and were unfortunate enough to suffocate to death in a pool of mud (which could in fact happen) then you would at least have the satisfaction of knowing in your last moments that a nice gentlemen would turn up and ensure that all the details of your death were properly recorded.

That person (the coroner) would summon a jury, ask that jury questions (when did you die? how? etc.) and the jury (perhaps composed of your neighbours and / or work colleagues) would provide answers to the best of their abilities. The result was a coroners' inquest report which would, in most cases (but not all, different counties have different rules), find its way back to London to be filed away for posterity and with a pretty good survival rate.

Posterity then provided two diligent Oxford historians (Steven Gunn (professor of early modern history at Merton College, Oxford) and Tomasz Gromelski (research fellow at Wolfson College Oxford)) who have spent the last few years working their way through those reports (8,888 of them for the period 1500-1600, covering about half of the 9,000 or so parishes in England which existed at the time) to find out what we can learn.

It turns out we can learn rather a lot. I know they have been working on this for some time, as I sat next to one of them (a former tutor of mine) at a college dinner well over 10 years ago, and he was telling me about this project then.

Who do we have to thank?

This book left me with a great deal of respect for the coroners and the juries who put in the hard work to make sure that these things were done properly. Juries tended to be composed of what we might refer to nowadays as the middle classes (gentry, yeoman, etc.). By and large, they took their responsibilities seriously and discharged them with some diligence.

Inquests could be short or go on for months, but the reports are for the most part detailed, plausible, and serious minded. The authors note that, far from living up to contemporary stereotypes by ascribing accidents to divine (or diabolic) causes, the reports mostly seek non-supernatural explanations of the events described.

Why is it interesting?

The coroners' reports provide a window into the lives of ordinary Englishmen and women in a way offered by few other sources – anyone could (and did) die of accidents: the rich and the poor, the old and young, men and women, those living in towns and the countryside. They could also die in all sorts of situations – whilst at work, at play, whilst travelling or stationary.

Unlike many other sources, no particular categories of person are excluded. Diaries are an increasingly important source of evidence for this period (I have painful memories as a student, of Dr Gunn making me read the diary of a very dull Elizabethan Puritan lady) but by necessity required the writer to be literate.

The 8,888 coroner's reports cover 9,291 victims

Steve Gunn, Tomasz Gromelski, An accidental history of Tudor England

The 8,888 reports cover 9,291 victims, ranging from an 8-year-old who fell out of bed and into a fire while sleeping with his drunken widowed mother, to a man reputed to be 108 years old who fell from the roof of a stable reaching out for his thatcher's needle. The reports include the death of the 7-year-old Lord Dacre, the inheritor of a peerage title, who was crushed by his wooden vaulting horse. They also include the homeless and sometimes nameless, such as a girl who fell off the steps of a windmill after a night sheltering in a beacon house (where those tending the fire beacons to warn of foreign invasion kept themselves out of the weather).

As can be seen from the examples provided, what makes the inquest reports interesting is not just (or even primarily) what we can learn about accidental deaths themselves, but rather the adjacent information on the circumstances in which the accident occurred. Many of the reports provide detailed summaries of the events leading up to the accident. Sometimes that information is quite peripheral to the death itself, but gives fascinating insights in sixteenth century life, like the servants who rushed outside with a brass tub and a small cowbell to calm swarming bees and charm them into a hive (the actual death was of the unfortunate girl left behind, who fell into a tub of water).

Getting on with things

What we are given is a picture of everyday life in Tudor England. People often died doing everyday mundane things, like reading books or fetching water. This type of social history is for me the most interesting. As the authors note:

Conflict, change and resistance generated more evidence than simply getting on with things. But getting on with things is what most people did most days.

Steve Gunn, Tomasz Gromelski, An accidental history of Tudor England

The tone of the book is never flippant. The authors are respectful of the fact that these were real people, and the circumstances were often tragic (particularly the large numbers of unattended children who died, often through no fault of the parents, who had housework and chores which could not be left undone). The names of victims are always given.

We are also, occasionally, given glimpses of the more famous events and trends of the day. For example, Henry Skatergoode was hit on the head by a stone thrown down by a labourer dismantling the bell tower of a recently dissolved monastery. Henry Siesly, listening to a sermon, was hit on the head by a volume of the works of Heinrich Bullinger, the Zurich theologian popular with puritans.

The familiar and the strange world of Tudor England

One of the things I most enjoyed about this book is the mixture of the familiar and the strange. This is the type of history book which gives you a feel for a different time in a way that few other history books can achieve. What you get the sense of are people not that different from ourselves, going about their lives, working, travelling, and having fun.

The circumstances in which they do those things can be very different from our own, and make you reflect on the aspects of modern life that we would otherwise take for granted. In other ways, the challenges and situations they faced have similarities with those we face today.

The authors make the point that people were not needlessly careless with their own lives or the lives of those dependent on them – there is plenty of evidence for people taking safety precautions where it was possible to do so; but the nature of their lives and work often forced them to take risks that could not be avoided (for example, mothers and servants leaving children unattended in order to complete household chores).

Let's delve into some of these inadvertently hazardous activities...

Editor's interjection: you can have a look at the full dataset of accidents online, in handy csv or xlsx format. I looked up my childhood town of Newbury in Berkshire which appeared to be a relatively dangerous place to live, with the River Kennet being a particular hazard.

🌊 Beware the water

One aspect of modern life I have not previously given much thought to is access to water in our homes. In 16th century England, drowning was by far the most common cause of accidental death, making up 43% of reported accidental deaths, a far higher percentage than modern Britain (but not far off the percentage in certain developing countries today).

One of the reasons for this is that, unlike us, a Tudor householder had no direct access to water in the home.

Water collection led to nearly one in twenty accidental deaths, one in eight for women and girls over the age of five. Drinking, cooking with water, brewing, washing (yourself, your children, clothes, dishes), all required trips to the nearest water source, which might be a well, pond, or nearby river. This was often undertaken by women (housewives, children, servants) wearing multiple layers of heavy woollen clothing.¹ Water had to be collected year-round, often in icy conditions.

Others died falling off bridges which might be little more than wooden planks, sometimes while also trying to navigate across livestock or carts. John Tydde died whilst attempting to pole-vault across a stretch of water to check on his cattle (his stake snapped). People died whilst trying to save others from drowning, including their own children. Others (particularly the young) died whilst playing and having fun in water.

🛞 Travel, potholes, and mud

Like today, travelling by road could be dangerous. Carts and wagons accounted for one in six accidental deaths which is a higher proportion than road traffic deaths now. If modern cars feel dangerous, at least they have brakes – imagine trying to lead a horse and cart down a steep slope.

It turns out that England has also long had a problem with potholes and poorly maintained roads, which you may or may not find comforting next time your car's suspension is ruined. Francis Turner broke his neck jumping from his cart into a wheel-rut. The problem was so acute that it led to legislation in 1555, which noted that:

highways were “nowe bothe verie noisome and tedious to travell in and dangerous to all passengers and cariages”

Steve Gunn, Tomasz Gromelski, An accidental history of Tudor England

A sentiment that many today will sympathise with.²

Following that legislation, there was an increasing incidence of accidents involving workmen maintaining roads.

💩 Death by mud and poo

If problems with potholes continue to plague us, thankfully death by mud is a less common hazard nowadays. In Tudor England, mud could be deadly. William Peers was crushed by his horse as it tried to drag itself out of a deep muddy pool in the middle of Henherst Lane in Staplehurst, Kent. Peter Cowles got stuck in mud on a walk and died of cold and exhaustion. Henry VIII got stuck in mud trying to jump over a stream whilst on a hawking trip but had a servant to drag him out.

Tudor poo was also dangerous. Geoffrey Lyteljohn had a 'jaques' set over a pond, but the seat broke at 3 a.m. when he was relieving himself. John Dunkyn, a Cambridgeshire baker, fell drunken backwards into a cess pit whilst pooing – the jurors said he was 'qweasomed' by the stench.

🚧 Working

Our working lives are generally safer today than they were in 16th century England. Work on the land involved multiple hazards. A surprisingly large number of accidents involved stacked crops falling on top of people – this was more deadly than firearms. Working with fish could also be dangerous - Henry Walytt died in Exton, Rutland, when a fish wrapped in a canvas cloth fell on top of him whilst he slept and suffocated him to death.³

Fruit was roughly as deadly as firearms (for example, a person might fall from a tree collecting fruit). One accident in six in Herefordshire involved a tree. Many accidents occurred in or around mills, where the combination of heavy machinery and powerful forces could be fatal.

Work related accidents happened to children as well. For the typical Tudor householder, work life and domestic chores were less demarcated than they are today, particularly for women and children. Children were put to work at a young age, either helping at home or as servants or apprentices elsewhere. For those between the ages of 7 and 13, numbers of accidental deaths arising from work and play were roughly equal.

⚽ Playing sport

If you managed to get through your working day without any mishaps, you might choose to unwind with a game of football with friends.

Football had no codified rules and appears to have been a cross between what we would call 'football' (in the UK meaning), rugby, with a bit of a general ruckus thrown in. In Cornwall, it was known as 'whurlyng' which gives some sense of the slightly chaotic nature of the game, which had few rules. Inevitably, it led to many accidents. Some embraced this side of the game, with Isaac Fakker calling out 'Let us make work for the surgeons' as he charged at his opponents.

Let us make work for the surgeons

Isaac Fakker playing football in Tudor England

A lot of sporting accidents involved falling on knives. The authors explain that almost everyone carried a knife with them, as it was the principal means of cutting up and eating food (forks were still relatively rare in this period); and it probably would not have been practical to leave a pile of knives on the sidelines whilst a game of football was played (both because of the risk of the knife being stolen and also because of arguments which may have ensued regarding which knife belonged to whom). As a result, it was usual for men to run around with knives still hanging on their belt. The resulting accidents are not then difficult to imagine.⁴

If running around playing a weird football/rugby mix whilst carrying a knife on your belt sounds dangerous, there were even riskier ways to entertain yourself. Wrestling was a favourite pastime for the Tudor Englishman, with the dividing line between play and confrontation not always easy to discern from the reports. Englishmen were required by law to practice archery with the longbow, and there were many accidents involving innocent bystanders being hit by stray arrows. But my personal favourite Tudor pastime is the game of 'throwing the sledgehammer' which substituted for football in the summer months. If the UK ever hosts the Olympic games again, hopefully we will push for its reintroduction.

🍺 Having fun and courtship

Some means of having fun have endured better than sledgehammer throwing. People today still enjoy dancing and having a drink, often in combination. Then, like now, the alcohol/dance combination could be used by young men in a forlorn attempt to impress young ladies. William Lamley, for example, fell into boiling water whilst drunkenly dancing on one leg whilst showing off to female servants.⁵

Accidents involving alcohol were, then as now, a common theme. George Hewet died whilst drunkenly propelling his boat down the Tyne paddling with his feet, one off each side. James Johnson, alias 'Harvie', was in the appropriately named Deadman's Lane in Southwark where he was 'barely possessed of a healthy and calm mind from his great drunkenness'. He pulled down his breeches to empty his bowels but fell into a ditch dead-first and suffocated in the water, mud, and filth. I used to live in Southwark myself and that story brought back some happy memories.

Love could (and still does) inspire rash behaviour, with or without the involvement of alcohol. A young man described as feeling an ardent desire for marriage ran towards a young lady who was holding a willow rod which accidentally poked him in the eye, killing him from the injury.

Final Destination

There were times when I felt like I was reading the script for a Final Destination movie set in Tudor England.⁶ Causes of death could be convoluted. Thomas Alsopp died in Coventry whilst standing in what had been the cemetery of the Greyfriars when a maypole fell over. It missed him but hit the city wall behind and dislodged a stone, which struck him on the head. There is more than one death by falling meat: Elizabeth Bowne, a servant, was sitting by the fire when four flitches of bacon fell from the chimney on top of her.

Conclusion

This is an excellent book which provides unique insights into the day to day lives of ordinary Tudor men and women. If you want to learn about how people lived (and died) in Tudor England, this is a great place to come.

The significance of the clothing is that if a person fell into a body of water, this type of clothing would make it particularly difficult to get out again. I was slightly confused by the frequency of drowning in Tudor England until this point was explained (particularly since drownings often seemed to occur in ditches and near the edges of ponds and rivers where you might assume the water would be relatively shallow). Other contributing factors may have been that most people did not know how to swim, and the incidents often occurred in cold/freezing weather when the body might experience shock on contact with water. The explanation is provided towards the end of the book but perhaps could have been useful nearer the start. ↩︎
This reminded me of a story recently told to me by a person from India. Apparently, in some of the bigger cities during monsoon season, there is a problem with people falling down uncovered flooded manholes, with the unfortunate individual often swept out to sea. ↩︎
It is tempting to assume that alcohol was involved in this incident, but the authors note that the coroners' reports were generally quite thorough in mentioning drunkenness, and none was mentioned in this case. It is possible that the 'fish' was a large aquatic mammal such as a porpoise. ↩︎
These did not happen only, or even principally, in a sporting context. People accidently cutting themselves with their own knives (often whilst falling over on top of them) is a recurrent theme of the book. ↩︎
Whilst not specified, it is presumably fair to assume that he had two legs (wouldn't the jury/coroner have mentioned otherwise?), and the one legged dance was therefore voluntary. ↩︎
At the time I thought this was a relatively original observation. Sadly, I listened to a podcast with Dr Gunn in which the interviewer made exactly the same comparison. ↩︎

The Last Dynasty - review

2025-12-05T00:00:00Z

Our review of The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, by Toby Wilkinson, first published in October 2024.

The Last Dynasty covers the rule of the Greek Ptolemies over Egypt for the 300 years until the Romans took.

Recommended! While not skimping on high politics and the scandalous behaviour of the Greek dynasty, it also gives us a flavour of life in the fields, the temples and in the minds of ordinary Egyptians too.

★★★★☆

Ancient Egypt has a history that spans an incredible amount of time. From 3100 BCE to 30 BCE there are 31 centuries, covering 33 dynasties, and 390 different pharaohs.¹

When my ancestors were feeling pleased with themselves for putting one stone on top of another stone at Stonehenge in ancient Britain, the Egyptians were piling up 2.3 million blocks of stone to make the Great Pyramid: 210 layers high².

It is all pretty impressive.

Which is perhaps why it is easy to overlook the odd few centuries here and there, a case in point being the last three centuries of Pharaonic Egypt, ruled over by the (Greek) Ptolemies. The only two I could have named before reading The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra by Toby Wilkinson were Ptolemy (the first one who was friends with Alexander the Great) and Cleopatra (the last one, who killed herself with (possibly) an asp).

Apparently I am not alone - Wilkinson tells us that this period is too late for the Egyptologists and too early for the Romanists - and so tends to get neglected. The oddity is that, measured by longevity, this is the most successful dynasty in the entire history of Egypt, at almost 300 years long.³ The Last Dynasty fills in this lacuna and introduces us to the full range of characters during the Ptolemaic dynasty, most of which are also called Ptolemy or Cleopatra, which makes them easy to remember but hard to tell apart.

A Ptotted History

So what happened?

It all starts with Alexander the Great, who conquers Egypt and everywhere else then dies. His general and childhood buddy Ptolemy gets his hands on Egypt in 323 BCE.

Ptolemy I is relatively unusual in trying to get along with the people he has conquered, even going to the extent of inventing a new god ‘Serapis’ to bring his Greek and Egyptian people together (“one of only a few historically attested examples of an invented deity”).

Ptolemy I has a son (also called Ptolemy) who succeeds in turn. Scandalously for his Greek subjects Ptolemy II divorced his first wife to marry his sister Arsinoe II. By contrast his Egyptian peoples considered this a sensible policy for a happier Egypt.

The Ptolemies were good at ostentation and Wilkinson describes the first Ptolemaieia - which was a sort of rival Olympic games. The opening parade through Alexandria was just as over the top as some of the modern Olympic opening ceremonies, including animals, fancy dress, treasure and:

a float bearing a 180-foot-long golden penis, wound around with golden ribbons and tipped with a gold star nine feet in circumference

Toby Wilkinson, The Last Dynasty

When his turn came, Ptolemy III also did a pretty good job and continued the intellectual achievements of his father and grandfather with the Alexandrian Mouseion and Library, boasting illustrious alumni such as Euclid, whose mathematical mastery of planes and solids may have been inspired by the geometric shape of the great pyramid itself.⁴

How to run a country

As well as the political side of things, Wilkinson delves into some of the inner workings of the Egyptian state, including the duties of a provincial governor’s deputy (called a household manager or oikonomos) which seem to have been to micro manage everything: from checking that the stipulated crops had been planted in each field, to the depth of the canal intakes. Advice was also given that:

During your tour of inspection try as you [go] about to encourage everybody and make them feel happier

memo from the finance minister of Ptolemy IV to an anonymous oikonomos

Things start to go wrong

Back to the politics.

Things started to go awry with Ptolemy IV (221 BCE), who was much more interested in chillaxing on his custom built super yacht, rather than doing important Pharaoh stuff.

He did fight and win a massive battle against the Ptolemies’ perennial enemy the Seleukids to the East, but because he had enrolled a lot of Egyptians into his army (for the first time) this laid the foundations for a massive revolt.

This revolt was followed by a massive military defeat, soon after Ptolemy V (his son) became king in 200 BCE, fighting the Seleukids again. Meanwhile the rebellion that had begun in 206 BCE was still going strong (and would last for more than twenty years, until 184 BCE).

Staying on message

In the context of a state that was under severe strain, Ptolemy V decided in 196 BCE to rally his people behind him by staging a “spectacular coronation” in Memphis (Cairo). Priests from around the country gathered together to issue a decree telling everyone what a fantastic chap Ptolemy V was and that statues of him should be put up all over the place. They went on to say:

a copy of the decree itself would be placed in every temple ‘of the first, second and third division’ – in other words, not just the major temples, but even relatively small shrines – with the text set down in ‘the writing of the divine words, the writing of documents, and the writing of the Ionians’: hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek.

Toby Wilkinson, The Last Dynasty

You can see a copy of the decree in the British Library today - the only one which has so far been found - which has become famous as the Rosetta Stone. This decree was fundamental to the decipherment of hieroglyphics and therefore for Toby Wilkinson to write this book!

Rotten Romans

Ptolemy VI became Pharaoh as a six year old. Defeated by the Seleukids ten years later he needed the (humiliating) intervention of Rome to get them out of Egypt. Ptolemy VI died in 145 BCE with no heir.

Pterrible Ptolemies

The actions of his younger brother (and at one time co-ruler) Ptolemy VIII⁵, encapsulate the love-hate character of the ruling family’s intra-familial relationships.

First he married his brother’s widow and his own sister, in order to control this potential rival. Soon after having a son together “the king began a relationship with his niece, Cleopatra III. He wed her while he was still married to her mother, Cleopatra II – and elevated her to the rank of queen.” Again this outraged the Greek subjects. And again the Egyptians were more blasé - this was simply the divine royal family behaving the way gods have behaved since time began.

The mother and daughter Cleopatras became bitter rivals and eventually the rivalry erupted into civil war, with mum Cleopatra driving daughter Cleopatra and uncle Ptolemy out of Alexandria.

Ptolemy VIII then started to worry that his own son by mum Cleopatra might be a threat. To prevent any trouble it is reported that:

Ptolemy VIII then had his son’s body dismembered and the parts delivered to Cleopatra II [his sister, wife, brother's widow, plus his son's mother] in Alexandria, timed to arrive the night before her birthday celebrations.

Toby Wilkinson, The Last Dynasty

After this gruesome stunt and success on the battlefield, Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III (the niece) regained control and it was Cleopatra II’s (the mum) turn to flee. Ptolemy VIII herded his sister’s supporters into the gymnasium at Alexandria and burned them all to death.

His position now secure, he spent most of the rest of his reign building and renovating temples, before proving there is no justice in the world by dying peacefully of natural causes in 116 BCE.

Power politics

From this point on it was more of the same: more Ptolemies, more Cleopatras, more incest, and a whole lot more infighting. All the while the Romans were getting stronger and closer. Eventually, when it comes to the Cleopatra that we all know (Cleopatra VII) it required some highly dextrous statecraft to turn Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony into Egyptian allies rather than despoilers, a feat which was not possible when Octavian defeated Mark Antony and marched into Egypt with his army.

The Romans were not interested in becoming pharaohs, they just wanted the money (and grain). So with the end of the Ptolemies came the end of a line of Egyptian pharaohs that was at least 3,000 years old.

Ptwo dimensional

What makes The Last Dynasty so interesting is that it goes much deeper than my one dimensional political summary above.

For example we have:

🗺️ A survey of the Hellenistic world around Egypt with Macedonia in the north, the vast Seleukids empire to the east, and Nubia to the south. Then a day trip to see the sights of Alexandria.
🌾 The economic foundations of the kingdom including drainage and land reclamation in districts like Fayum to bring more land under cultivation.
🖼️ Portraits of some ‘ordinary people’: their lives and livelihoods, such as the scribe Menkhes and his work in rural Egypt.
🏛️ Egyptian temples and religious life, including the bizarre animal mummification craze whereby “as many as 10,000 [ibis] birds were reared, mummified and buried in the Memphite necropolis every year”.
⚱️ The often tense relationship between Greeks and Egyptians, and, as far as possible, the Egyptian outlook.

For me these descriptions of ordinary life were the most interesting bits of the book - how the Geeks disrupted but also coexisted alongside the Egyptians was something I have wondered about in the past.

Any downsides?

The book is pretty easy to read and wears its scholarship lightly. I only started to lose track of the Ptolemies after the 8th one (as you might have guessed from my summary above) which I think says a lot for Wilkinson’s power to engage.

The only negative to highlight is that it does feel at times like it has been bashed out at speed, without too much care for the prose. This is mainly an issue when Wilkinson is describing the various cities, which sound at times like he is writing for the Ptolemaic Tourist Board, or an ancient lonely planet guidebook.⁶

Conclusion

The Last Dynasty covers a lot and does it well. If you have even a passing curiosity in the Ptolemies, or the Rosetta Stone, or the Greeks in general, or even the Romans I would recommend this book.

If you are an Allan Partridge fan you might also like to know that this is the same as 26.9 million episodes of the Darling Buds of May, 13.5 million episodes of Doctor Who or 53.8 million episodes of Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge. If you are more interested instead in how I counted Egyptian pharaohs you can see my google spreadsheet which counts Egyptian pharaohs (see sheet 2). The spreadsheet pulls data from this wikipedia list of pharaohs (which hopefully is the consensus view) and then lines all the pharaohs up in a single column. If I have got any of this wrong please update the wikipedia page directly and with a bit of luck it will all pull through. I’m 100% certain that I’m not the first person to count them in this way but I couldn’t find any other handy single “all the pharaohs” csv file! ↩︎
Again somewhat surprisingly, it is not that easy to find a decent source for this on the internet. But here is a nice one in German that sets out how many layers of stone there are in the Great Pyramid of Giza ↩︎
I found this hard to believe so I went to back to my favourite academic source: wikipedia, where a list of the dynasties of Egypt shows that this is indeed the case, with the Ptolemaic dynasty clocking in at 275 years (a conservative number), vs the runner up 18th dynasty at 258 years long. ↩︎
Although I have to admit that this is pure postulation. ↩︎
In case you are wondering why we went straight from Ptolemy VI to Ptolemy VIII, this is because the person who was previously thought by academics to be Ptolemy VII turned out not to exist, but by the time they realised this they had already named Ptolemy VIII and it was too late to turn back. ↩︎
I also got the feeling that Wilkinson “one shotted” the description of the sacred precinct of Ptah in Memphis (now Cairo): “There were also special areas... in one enclosure grew a special tree under which sat a sacred baboon.” What was special about the tree? How did they identify the sacred baboon? And how did they get it to sit still? ↩︎