No comments about Thomas Hardy's World.

5 comments about Queen Victoria's Family: A Century of Photographs.

1. excellent photographs of collection of royal family of england ,from1840-1940.some of the pictures i've seen before ,but there are alot of new one's not seen before.



2. This is an excellent resource as well as enjoyable reading and viewing. Queen Victoria had a large, illustrious family. This book not only humanizes and personalizes the many family members, it also helps to make sense of the extended family connections - particularly with the included family trees in the back of the book.
   
   I have perused through this book many times, and have recently given one to a friend, who absolutely loved it. This is not a history book that will just sit on a shelf. It is a required addition to anyone interested in the history of Queen Victoria and the Eurpoean monarchies.



3. Absolutely remarkable. Charlotte Zeepvat takes the reader into the lives of Queen Victoria and her family with the amazing photographs, both candid and formal. The pictures are rare. They are well organized and have excellent captions. Zeepvat is a great writer/historian and I recommend her books to all.



4. There are certain photos that I simply expect to see when perusing volumes about European royalty. However, upon receiving Zeepvat's book, I was thrilled to find so many rarely seen photos of some of the more obscure descendants of the "Grandmother of Europe." If you're a royalty buff like I am, you can spend hours immersed in this marvelous book and its detailed family trees.



5. for those interested in royalty. While some of these photos can be found in many different books, some of them I've seen for the first time. Queen Victoria's decendants are so numerous and belong to so many different royal houses. Definitely a worthwhile purchase!

No comments about Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940-1985.

No comments about Goodbye to All That and But It Still Goes On.

1 comments about Lawrence of Arabia: Mirage of a Desert War.

1. What a precious story. After reading "A peace to end all peace" and after that, watching for the first time in my life the movie "Lawrence of Arabia", I was desperate to read a biography of this remarkable person. Undoubtedly Lawrence was quite a personality, who saw in the Arab revolt an opportunity to discharge his intellectual ammunition, and what an excellent work he did. Even Churchill admired Lawrence, and after reading this book, everything is clear to this respect...just imagine yourself travelling through the desert, with no comforts, figthing the Turks and trying to unite the Arabs for a definitive attack to Damascus --- well, that was what lawrence accomplished.
   
   Reading a book like this is highly recommended for anyone because beside learning history, you learn about personalities, cultures and war strategy. I hope I have the time to read the "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", and maybe one day, travel the cities that Lawrence once walked.

5 comments about The Beatles: The True Beginnings.

1. This book is heavy with pictures on every page,including rooms The Beatles painted and played in,clothes they wore before the leather look,a diagram of The Casbah. Many stories about people and events that took place there."As was written,It was hot and sweaty.No booze,just coffee and coke and fantastic live music."If you are wondering who Roag Best is,he is the son of Mona and Neil Aspinall.



2. 
   
   A fascinating book about the inception of the Beatles, or "pre-Beatle" era, if you will. The beautiful archival photographs will certainly delight all readers as well as the memorabilia. Readers will certainly get a feel for early-1960s Liverpool (1960-62) and the environment in which the Beatles flourished.
   
   Thanks to this book, fans can actually see the club where the Beatles' fame was soon launched. The world's number one band cut their musical teeth in the Casbah, owned and run by drummer Pete Best's mother, Mona Best. The club opened in 1959 when the Quarrymen-Silver Beatles were coming into their own. This underground rock club was the precursor to its American counterparts such as the Hard Rock Cafe and the Fillmore East and Fillmore West, to name three.
   
   This fresh perspective of Beatle history includes Mona Best's story as well as other members of the Best family. Pete Best, the Beatles' first drummer was unceremoniously ousted from the band in August of 1962. Ringo Starr replaced him and the rest is, well, history. Fans will undoubtedly feel as if they are watching the Beatles evolve from relative local obscurity into the musical juggernaut they became and remain to this day.



3. I love this book! Makes me want to fly to Liverpool now and visit. Pete Best, who was drummer for the Beatles before they kicked him out with no explanation, gives us a fabulous treat. His mother ran the Casbah Club in Liverpool in the family home's basement. After Pete was booted out, the club sort of died down and was closed. It remained sealed up for many, many years, until it was opened. Original murals done by the Beatles still on the walls, microphones, and other items were found, and the club reopened to people who wish to come and see the only remaining original club, with even the original walls! Let the Cavern try to claim that! Color photos, inside stories, more make this a sensational book. Beatle fans, Merseybeat fans, music historians, Scousers, etc...BUY IT!



4. The story behind this book is one of the secrets in the Beatles tale. Neil Aspinall, who still works for the Beatles as director of Apple Corps, looking after their legacy and business interests, classmate of Paul McCartney's at the Liverpool Institute, was Pete Best's good friend. When the band needed someone to help them move their equipment from gig to gig, Neil was hired because he had a car. Throughout the band's story, Neil was the road manager.

   Neil lived with Pete's family for a while in the early years. He had an affair with Pete and brother Rory's hip, relatively young, Indian mother, Mona. They had a child together, Roag.

   When Pete was tossed out of the Beatles, he told Neil to choose between the job with the band and his living with the Best family. Neil chose the Beatles. He was not allowed to see his son grow up.

   This is that son's book.




5. Will any true Beatles fan ever admit that there is no need for any further information regarding the Fab Four? Absolutely not --- the strong popularity of THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY is evidence enough that a voracious audience still exists for Beatles lore in all shapes and sizes.

   THE BEATLES: THE TRUE BEGINNINGS really encompasses two book ideas: the Merseybeat music scene in Liverpool from which the Beatles developed, and Pete Best's experiences as an early Beatle. Either of these ideas, developed fully, would make interesting reading. As they are, however, two slender ideas are crammed into one unfocused book with big pictures and sparse text. Even so, I get the impression that this book was a stretch --- does any fan, no matter how obsessive, really require a picture of the case in which Pete Best carried his drums? How about a shot of the spare guitar strings he found inside?

   A prominent outpost of the Merseybeat scene was Mrs. Best's Casbah Coffee Club, owned and operated by Pete Best's mother, Mona Best. This book is in large part a tribute to the remarkable Mona Best from her sons --- Roag, Pete, and Rory. Mrs. Best pawned her jewelry, placed a bet on a horse, and won the money to buy Number Eight Haymans Green, a giant house whose cellars were transformed into the Casbah when the Best boys discovered rock-and-roll and needed a place to perform and listen to music. The Beatles first performed at the Casbah as the Quarrymen. They played to a crowd of 1,500 and received three pounds as payment.

   You probably know how the story goes. The Beatles were a huge success and got a gig playing in Hamburg, Germany where they endured a horrible, grueling performance schedule and living conditions like something from a Dickens novel (assuming Dickens might ever have written about a German red-light district). In short, the Hamburg experience was destined to make or break the Beatles. It made the Beatles, but Pete Best was not invited to continue their success.

   Is the Best family bitter? Maybe a little; it is their theory that Pete Best was simply so much better looking that he was a liability to the other band members. Also, the title THE TRUE BEGINNINGS seems to imply that they are setting the record straight, but there isn't very much new information here and it's unlikely to change anyone's mind about the Beatles as individuals or as a cultural phenomenon.

   --- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn

5 comments about E.W. Bullinger: A Biography: A Biography.

1. This book is very helpful, if you are a Bullinger fan, in putting his life into it's historical and cultural context. It helps one understand the man better, and his passions. I was very sad to read that he died before he completed The Companion Bible, because one can almost feel where he stopped in that Bible. Very good reading.



2. Anyone who is a fan of E.W. Bullinger's work will appreciate this book! The author does an exceptional job portraying E.W. Bullinger's life from youth to the masterful bible scholar that he became. The book gives helpful insight to the man that gave biblical truth's to a Christian world that was severally lacking biblical accuracy and understanding.
   
   E.W.'s work inspired many people including myself, to study God's Word with great care and great love. I've read many of his books, but knew very little about the man that wrote them until I came across this book. Naturally, I was very excited to find out that a biography has been written about him. And after reading this biography, I have even more appreciation and respect for the man whose books taught me the spectacular accuracy of God's infallible Word. A must have for anyone who is familiar with Mr. Bullinger's works!!



3. This book gives great detail and care to the historical surroundings of a great era of Biblical truth. If you do not know who Dr. Bullinger is, don't worry because your Seminary professors all do. He stood for the fundamentals of the faith and is counted as faithful to the Word of God.



4. A must read about a great man.



5. I read this book some years ago. It is a very good work that gives insights to the life of this man and encouragement by seeing his example. He died almost a century ago, yet his work is still alive. It is good to read his books but it is also good to know the life that produced them. After all, it is not only a matter of the work but most a matter of the life that produces the work, and this book will give useful insights to it

4 comments about Boudica: The Life and Legends of Britain's Warrior Queen.

1. This book describes the life of Boudica and times and the context in which the Iceni Warrior-Queen lived.
   It tells of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, something about pre-Roman Britain, of Julius Ceasar's invasion of Britain, the conquest of Britain a century later by Claudius, and of the Druids
   around which British life centered in pre-Roman times and were ruthlessly stamped out by the Romans.
   Interesting insight in human sacrifices by the Druids as well as their use of hallucinogenic drugs such as hallucinogenic mushrooms.
   The book gives us an insight into the sheer brutality of the Roman Empire, destroying entire nations and seizing lands at will.
   In retaliation for an assault on his men by German tribesman, Julius Casar ordered one of the biggest slaughters of his career.
   
   However the book centers around the Roman coquest of Britain and how the British tribes were subdued.
   It is important to note that prior to the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain centuries later, there never was an identity among Britons as a nation.
   They identified according to the various tribes to which they belonged, which essentially formed confederations in different regions of today's England.
   The Iceni were a client tribe of Rome, and their lands stretched across most of what is now East Anglia, covering today's Norfolk, north Suffolk, and north-east Cambridgeshire.
   Boudica's husband, Prasutagus, was the king of Iceni.
   when Prasutagus died his attempts to preserve his line were ignored and his kingdom was annexed as if it had been conquered. Lands and property were confiscated and nobles treated like slaves. According to Tacitus, Boudica was flogged and her young daughters brutally raped. Boudica launched a rebellion of the Iceni, and although ultimately defeated, she sacked the towns of what are today Colchester (Camulodunum), London (Londinium) and St Albans (Verulamium) ruthlessly destroying these towns and rooting the Roman masters of Britain.
   
   The rest of the book traces the legend of Boudica as it developed thorugh the ages in England, both as a central component of British (or more accurately English national identity) as well as the symbol or by-word of a
   strong women She was an inspiration for Queen Elizabeth I when she rallied the English people to resist the invasion by the British Empire and centuries later for the suffragette movement.
   It is also worth noting here a large moral difference between the suffragettes and most of today's radicals.
   When the First World War broke out, the Sufragettes suspended their campaign for women's suffrage and threw their energies into the war effort against Germany.
   Compare this toi the moral turpitude of most of today's radical left in the USA and Britain, who are openly siding with Islamic terrorist movements and terrorists states, int he West's battle for survival against Islamo-Nazism.
   Among the Leftist allies of the Islamists are included many radical feminists who are oblivious to the fact that in Islamist states such as Iran, and the Palestinian Entity, women have no human rights at all.
   Perhaps the strugle of these movements for social change in their own countries would have had more legitimacy has they not sided with the murderers and tyrants.
   Boudica was in the 1980s often compared to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
   The book also details Boudica's role in popular culture through the centuries, including the books, plays and movies about her.
   Sculptures of Boudica encapsulate the different roles the Iceni Queen may have played.
   A 1902 statue by Thomas Thornycroft, erected 1902 at Westminster Bridge, London, depicts Boudica armed with a lance riding a scythed chariot carried by rearing horses.
   At Cardiff city hall one can see a very maternal depiction of Boudica with her two beautiful daughters in an exquisite work by James Harvard Thomas unveiled in 1916.
   This book makes for fascinating reading and riveting history.
   It includes much social history and reveals some finds showing the houses and clothes worn by people in Roman Britain such as the leather briefs found in Queen's Street, London, of leather briefs, probably worn by a female acrobat or performer , in Roman ruled Londinium (London).



2. The main reason for reading this book was to find out about the life and legend of Boudica. She didn't show up until after page 175. First you must wade through Roman history and not just its conquest of Britain, then the history of Britain, than a history of Druids then a brief interlude in which she finally tells us there isn't much factual information about Boudica. Then the book rambles off into trivia. The book is well written, full of information however just not on the person in the book's title: Boudica. If you want to know anything about Boudica -- look elsewhere.



3. I bought this book shortly after its release, but it's been (regrettably) sitting on my shelf until just a week ago, when I decided it was about time I got around to it. How glad I was that I did! Boudicca has long been an interest of mine, and I was pleased with Collingridge's thoroughly researched account of the queen's life and, perhaps more importantly, the context from which historians glean information about her and her people. By providing a full summary of the world in 61 AD, and a Roman as well as a Briton perspective of the events surrounding the Iceni queen's debasement, revolt and subsequent death, Collingridge places Boudicca in an environment neither exaggerated nor abstracted with sensationalism.
   
   Needless to say, I was dismayed upon trekking over to Amazon and finding the "average rating" for this book so low, based entirely on a single review from a person who appeared to have had little interest in the subject in the first place, denouncing the book as "superficial" and claiming its author makes no attempt to show why we should care about the subject. The only problems I could see with this very solid history was with editing (names of historical personages are occasionally misspelled: Cleopatra's son by Julius Caesar is referred to as "Caesarian" rather than the more accurate and commonly cited spelling Caesarion, and other errors crop up now and again), but these, placed in the context of the book, are nitpicker's complaints as Collingridge clearly knows her material regardless of editor's faults. Rest assured, the book is not superficial as claimed by the (until-now) sole reviewer, but rather exhaustively researched. Collingridge cites primary Roman sources as well as interviews with contemporary historians to create a fully fleshed-out portrait of Boudicca and her life and times, and continuing on to analyze the icon of the "warrior queen" in British culture then and now.
   
   So why SHOULD we care about the subject, to address an aforementioned complaint? While not the most widely-known portion of Roman history, Boudicca's revolt should be remembered for the same reason we should remember any history. I recommend this book for anyone interested in Roman history, British and Celtic history, Boudicca herself, and even to anyone interested in gender politics through the ages as well as the changing iconography of the warrior queen. To anyone willing to lend an ear (or an eye, in this case), Collingridge offers a fascinating, solid account of these subjects and more that is certainly worth your time... and more than two stars on Amazon.



4. The book is superficial and never really gets to the purpose of
   even why one would want to write a book about this subject much
   less read one. The author wonders all over the place in a vain attempt to keep the reader interested with references spread throughout British history from Elizabeth I to Princess Diana. Simply put the book is a waste not well researched or thought out; and finally not well written.

No comments about The Hidden Wordsworth.

2 comments about George I (The English Monarchs Series).

1. I read a Hard back copy from the local library and could not believe it. I loved this bio. I have read many other biographies and books on the Stuart and Hanover Dynasties of Britain but most were from Charles II and the pretenders and George III through Victoria. George I seems to be remembered as the British King who really didn't care; He took his time accepting the throne, refused to learn English, ran away to Hanover every chance he got and only wanted English money proven by the South Sea Bubble scandal. This book gives us more. A lot more. It shows the who and why, it dispels the stories I have listed above and gives us the man, flesh, blood and emotions. He becomes a real and more understood human than just an uncaring figure from history. I highly recommend this book. It is a great read. I didn't want to put it down. It flows easy and gives enough detail and background to keep you moving through history and his life without bogging you down. All those, Jacobites included :) who do not know George I outside of the usual should read this book. I can't say enough about it.



2. The author's writing style is easy to follow, without being simplistic and her grasp of the historical issues of the period is excellent.

   She presents a great deal of information about the women involved in the history of George, which is unusual for a historian of the Hanovers.

   The book is approachable without an in-depth knowledge of the German principalities (though this obviously helps).

   Solidly recommended.