A history of war in 100 battles

Richard Overy has chosen 100 battles across the centuries showing how the nature of armed combat has changed over time. The battles are not arranged chronologically but under broad themes - leadership (including Battle of Hastings, Battle of Bannockburn and Battle of Trafalgar), against the odds (including Battle of Agincourt), innovation (including Battle of Crecy and Battle of Britain), deception (including Fall of Troy and Normandy invasion),courage in the face of fire (including Battle of Poitiers-Tours) and in the nick of time (including Battle of Waterloo). An introduction to each section is provided. The stories are usually one or two pages and the book is well illustrated (usually paintings) and has a detailed bibliography and index. An interesting book to dip into.

Scottish history

With many branches of my family tree having Scottish connections I often look out for books recounting the history of that country. Three titles recently found in the library are listed below:

Collins little book of Scottish history: from Bannockburn to Holyrood by John Abernethy was published in 2014. This small publication aims to provide a broad coverage of the history of Scotland concentrating on the events that have made Scotland an individual country. Each page briefly covers a topic - a person or place or event or institution - providing a brief summary that can be investigated further in other publications. The book is arranged chronologically but the index also helps the reader locate specific topics.

The fourth edition of Scotland: a concise history by Fitzroy Maclean was published in 2012. This book, in text and pictures, provides an overview of the history of the country in nine broad chapters.  The sections of the book are easy to navigate allowing you to locate specific topics. The detailed index and the list of the many illustrations are also useful.

Scottish archaeologist, Neil Oliver, has written A history of Scotland, published, in 2009, in conjunction with his television series with the same title produced for the BBC. This is an exploration of the things that make Scotland unique. Not just its chronological history but also the development and divisions of language, religion, the economy, relationships with England over time. When reading this book, those who have watched Neil Oliver on television will imagine him there recounting the story of the country that he loves. Once again there is a detailed index as well as a list for further reading.

Each of these books has a different approach to telling the story of Scotland's history but they can all be useful. For example when looking for information on the Battle of Bannockburn, page 33 in Abernethy's book provides a brief outline of the battle, some information about Robert the Bruce on page 32 and information about Stirling on page 34. The first section (8 pages) of chapter two in Maclean's book covers the battle of Bannockburn, the lead up to the battle and the aftermath. Oliver provides his interpretation of this period of Scottish history in the first 35 pages of chapter 4 in his book.

Turing's Cathedral

The subtitle for this book by George Dyson is The Origins of the Digital Universe. It is largely a study of major research establishments in the USA, such as the Institute for Advanced Study, established in the twentieth century for the study of advanced science, especially mathematical sciences. Prior to the Second World War a number of prominent scientists left Europe to live and work in America and these became an important part of the teams that worked on improved weapon capabilities during and after the war as well as furthering the development of  what became computer science. One of these men was John von Neumann who was from Hungary.

After the war a group of mathematicians, including von Neumann, worked on building a universal machine such as the one proposed by Alan Turing, an English mathematician. Turing studied for his PhD at Princeton University for two years from 1936 where he worked with von Neumann. With war looming he returned to England where he worked as a code-breaker creating machines to decipher German coded messages. Turing visited New York for a short time during the war and returned again in 1947 but in 1948 he was back working in Manchester.

Meanwhile von Neumann and his team experimented in developing machines, initially following the ideas of Turing's theories and then developing them further. The book therefore looks at the the history of the development of computer science until around 1957 when von Neumann died. As a study of the history of the development of computers during and after the war this is an interesting book, however the story becomes bogged down with technical detail which for the non-technical person is not easy to follow. According to some of the reviews on Goodreads, some of those with technical expertise question the presentation in this book. Never the less, in our current computer age, skimming through the book provides an interesting overview of the early development of computers that we take for granted today.

Review of Turing's Cathedral in New York Times May 4, 2012

The Secret Life of Bletchley Park

The subtitle of this book written by Sinclair McKay is The WWII codebreaking centre and the men and women who lived there.

Recently we saw the film, The Imitation Game, which is largely about Alan Turing, one of the codebreakers who worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. ABC2 has also shown the British television mystery series, The Bletchley Circle, set in the early 1950s where a group of women who had worked at Bletchley Park use there codebreaking skills to solve crime.

Bletchley Park was an establishment set up at the end of the 1930s with the aim of collecting together a team of people to work on breaking the coded messages of enemy forces, primarily German messages. Eventually thousands of men and women worked at Blatchley Park and before they were employed they all had to sign the Official Secrets Act. They were not allowed to discuss their work with anyone not working within their section and could definitely not tell family and friends what they were doing at Bletchley Park. This secrecy continued until the early 1970s.

In this book, published in 2010, the author uses interviews with a selection of staff who worked at Bletchley Park to help tell the story of this large establishment. Some of the more famous people such as Alan Turing, Dilly Knox and Alistair Denniston (to name a few) are mentioned throughout the book but the story told tries to cover the work in the many sections of the organisation and investigates how the lives of the staff were affected by living in a world of secrecy. Much of the information relating to the work of the codebreakers was destroyed once the war was over so the author has to rely, to a large extent, on the memories of those involved. In sections there is repetition of some of the stories and I found myself skim reading parts of the book, however if you are interested in this important aspect of World War II it is a good book to read.

The means of escape

This collection of short stories was published after the death of the author, Penelope Fitzgerald, in 2000. Penelope Fitzgerald was renowned for writing short, concise, novels. Once again this is a short book containing eight short stories. The stories are set in a variety of countries including, Australia, New Zealand, France and Greece as well as Britain and in different time periods. The stories, dealing with human foibles, uncertainties and missed opportunities, are told with a quiet humour in the observation of the characters and their actions. Reading the stories, I found, however, was not always straightforward and I had to read several of the stories twice, to see what I had missed when reading them the first time, in order to fully appreciate what had happened and why. Like much of the writing of Penelope Fitzgerald the stories /  characters tend to remain with the reader after finishing the book as the author challenges the reader to think about the actions of the characters.

Reviews:
Small but perfectly formed - Observer 29 October 2000

Rough-hewn lives - New York Times 26 November 2000

Little big town

The subtitle of this book, A Photographic journey through Melbourne's Little Streets and Laneways, describes this work by photographer, Jamie Murcia. Murcia has included a collection of photographs of the lanes, cul de sacs plus the 'little' streets that run parallel to the main streets in the Melbourne grid. The majority of the photographs were taken at night and many explore the effect of light in these locations, street art, culture and subculture and parts of the city many of us never see. A different look at Melbourne.

Middle Ages: the illustrated history of the Medieval World

This book, written by Anita Baker and published by Carlton Books in 2014, provides an easy to read introduction to the history of life in the Middle Ages in Europe. The period known as the Middle Ages is generally considered to be from the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 until, in Europe, the capture of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1543 or, in Britain, the death of Richard III in 1485.

The book is divided into six sections - dynasties and empires; daily life; religion; medieval culture; war and conquest plus dawn of a new age. Although it is only 98 pages, this well illustrated book provides an understanding of what it was like to live in Europe at this time allowing the reader to then explore sections in greater depths in other books.

The chapter, daily life in the Middle Ages looks at feudalism, women in the Middle Ages, the Church in daily life, employment, food, science and technology, medicine plus crisis in the fourteenth century (including plague, famine and general discontent).

This would be a good book for those starting to investigate this period in history, those who may have been able to trace their family tree back to this period or those who enjoy fiction set in medieval times.