The battle for China’s history
Xi Jinping controls the story of his country’s past to crush dissent. But historians are fighting to keep the truth…
ByHistory books
Discover all the New Statesman’s latest articles and reviews of history books. Here you can find expert opinion on the best reads for 2022.
The bones that built Britain
Winchester Cathedral’s mysterious “bone chests” tell a story of how warring kings and queens forged a new nation.
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Anne Boleyn’s blunders
A new history shows how the clever, ambitious queen was no match for the post-truth politics of Henry VIII’s court.
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Myths of the miners’ strike
An oral history of the bitter Eighties dispute reveals a conflict that went far deeper than just government vs trade…
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Requiem for a world war
Jeremy Eichler’s Time’s Echo shows how four great 20th-century composers captured the horrors of conflict.
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How England lost the Hundred Years War
The final part of Jonathan Sumption’s epic history reveals the complacency that led to the end of English power in…
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From Duncan Hamilton to Lydia Kiesling: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring The Story of Scandinavia by Stein Ringen and Big Meg by Tim and Emma Flannery.
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The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers redux
The 20th century’s most influential history book foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union and rise of China. Thirty-five years…
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Who makes history?
A study of postwar British politics overstates the influence of its leading personalities.
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Still fighting the history wars
Debates about Britain’s colonial legacy are not just a product of Brexit or woke politics – empire has always been…
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Europe’s race delusions
Built on imperial amnesia and competing nationalisms, the EU has never been the beacon of inclusion it claims to be.
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The 14 best books to help you understand Vladimir Putin’s Russia
This list offers the most incisive books on the past and present of Russia and its president.
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From Ferdinand Mount to Isabel Waidner: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Crisis Actor by Declan Ryan and Women We Buried, Women We Burned by Rachel Louise Snyder.
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The rise of Waterstones Dad
How the self-made man got lost in the marketplace of ideas.
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Pathologies of a president
A new book revisits Freud’s analysis of Woodrow Wilson to ask: how much do leaders’ psychologies shape our politics?
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How germs shape history
Jonathan Kennedy’s Pathogenesis reveals how diseases have built and broken empires and economies.
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From Guy Gunaratne to the science of allergies: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring M John Harrison's Wish I Was Here and Jonathan Miles on the French Riviera.
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Europe’s false dawn
After the revolutions of 1848, liberals helped create a conservative international order that has shaped the world since.
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The plain-speaking philosophers
Nikhil Krishnan’s A Terribly Serious Adventure shows how Oxford’s “ordinary language” movement, pioneered by JL Austin and Gilbert Ryle, looked…
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Soldiers in love
Men at War, Luke Turner’s tender account of servicemen’s transgressive private lives, transforms our understanding of the Second World War.
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