THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY by Lucien Musset
Boydell Press £25
Musset spent 50 years studying the Bayeux Tapestry, and in this strikingly illustrated book, which reproduces in colour every centimetre of the surviving embroidery (some 1.5 metres of which may be missing from the end), he not only provides explanatory text for each episode but also context on the tapestry’s history and purpose. Musset is admirably balanced and informed in his assessments: describing all the main theories about Harold’s death, he points out that the arrow that may or may not be embedded in the English king’s eye is actually a modern restoration of what could originally have been a lance.
THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE: A New History by Peter Heather
Macmillan £25
There are any number of theories to account for the decline of the western Roman empire in the 5th century — indeed, many modern scholars argue that it didn’t fall at all, but was merely “transformed”. The beauty of Heather’s book lies not so much in his unashamedly old-fashioned theory, which, pace Gibbon, asserts that a still-vigorous late empire was felled by a killer blow from barbarian invaders, as in the way it is told. This is narrative history of a high order, gripping, pulsating with drama, and backed by impressive scholarship lightly worn.
POSTWAR: A History of Europe since 1945 by Tony Judt
Heinemann £25
Don’t be put off by the size (830 pages) of this book, which aims to recount the history of the entire continent of Europe — west and east — since the second world war. Elegantly written, and often bracing in its opinions (“since 1989 it has become clearer than it was before just how much the stability of post-war Europe rested upon the ‘accomplishments’ of Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler”), Judt’s sometimes personal take on the past 60 years is both fresh and incisive. He may claim no overarching theory for his narrative, but his desire to link the fates of east and west, his dismissal of the cultural influence of America, and his belief that the concept of the European Union is “mortgaged to the past” offer plenty of food for thought.
REMEMBER, REMEMBER THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER
Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot by James Sharpe
Profile £15.99
Sharpe, professor of history at York, showed with his last book, Dick Turpin, that what really interests him is not just historical events per se, but also their cultural afterlife. Divided into two parts, this short, authoritative book trots dutifully through the details of the plot, but really comes into its own when discussing its strange resurrection in the annual fireworks display, an event to which Guy Fawkes became central only in the late 18th century.
PERSIAN FIRE: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by Tom Holland Little, Brown £20
Fresh from Rubicon, his spirited account of the end of the Roman Republic, Holland reimagines with equal panache another pivotal moment in classical history: the wars in 490BC and 480BC between the Persian empire of Darius and Xerxes and the Greek city states. All the elements that made the first book so exhilarating — his erudition, his cynicism, and above all his narrative zest — are present and correct in the new one, and the book contains one moment of drama (his description of the Athenian charge at the battle of Marathon as seen from inside the Greek hoplites’ helmets) that will give you goosebumps.
COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond
Allen Lane £20
Previously a biologist and now a highly influential environmental historian of dizzying erudition, Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, here trawls the annals of history in search of civilisations (and he would argue that there are many of them) that succumbed to environmental collapse. Mayans, Easter Islanders, Nordic Greenlanders and modern Rwandans all fall under his analytical microscope, as do some remarkable success stories (the tiny and self- sufficient island of Tikopia, for instance, which has been thriving for 3,000 years) in a book that is densely yet powerfully argued and has a very obvious contemporary context.
EDGE OF EMPIRE: Conquest and Collecting on the Eastern Frontiers of the British Empire by Maya Jasanoff
Fourth Estate £25
In this remarkable first book, Jasanoff offers an original take on current debates about the British empire by looking at two linked phenomena — the actions of collectors and adventurers at the very edge of empire, in Egypt and India between 1750 and 1850, and the imperial rivalry in those same territories between Britain and France, a rivalry that found symbolic expression in the struggle over Egyptian relics. If that sounds intimidating, it isn’t: the drama of Jasanoff’s stories, and her infectious enthusiasm, make this a consuming read.
EARTHLY POWERS: Religion and Politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the Great War by Michael Burleigh
HarperCollins £25
Burleigh’s previous book, the Samuel Johnson prize-winner The Third Reich: A New History, presented Nazism as a form of state religion. In this exploration of the interaction of politics and religion between the French revolution and the first world war, Burleigh seeks to explore the roots of such a monstrous hybrid. Tackling everyone from Robespierre to Marx and Dostoevsky, the book has a sweeping ambition that is matched by its learning.
Available at Sunday Times Books First prices on 0870 165 8585
Top five
ROUGH CROSSINGS by Simon Schama
BBC Books £20
Outstanding narrative about the fate of black Americans during and after the war of independence
THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE by Peter Heather
Macmillan £25
Gripping, old-fashioned narrative about the dying days of the Roman empire in the West
PERSIAN FIRE by Tom Holland
Little, Brown £20
Follow-up to Rubicon that tells the rousing story of the Greco-Persian wars of the 5th century
BC POSTWAR by Tony Judt
Heinemann £25
Fresh, incisive history of the whole of Europe — east and west — since the end of the second world war
EDGE OF EMPIRE by Maya Jasanoff
Fourth Estate £25
Dramatic accounts of collectors and imperial squabbles in 18th- and 19th-century India and Egypt
Bestsellers
1 Auschwitz by Laurence Rees (BBC) 40,605
2 Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain, 1942 (Bodleian Library) 27,857
3 Rough Crossings by Simon Schama (BBC) 9,315
4 Persian Fire by Tom Holland (Little, Brown) 9,288
5 In Search of Myths and Heroes by Michael Wood (BBC) 7,994
