made them: men and
women, their names lost to
posterity, known only by “the
shapes their letters made,
the stitches they sewed, the
bindings they fashioned”. She
explores why manuscripts
were made, how they were
lost and rediscovered, and
what they tell us about their
long-dead makers. Wonderful.
The Fall of Robespierre 24
Hours in Revolutionary Paris
by Colin Jones
OUP £25
The melodramatic story of
Robespierre’s fall has been
told many times, but never
in such gloriously sensual
detail. Tracking events in
Paris hour by hour, Jones
brings the French Revolution
to life in all its colour and
horror: the sweat and fear
in the prisons, the
exhausted paranoia of the
government committees, the
stench of the guillotined
bodies in the death pits
outside the city. Above all
he is brilliant on the
psychological twists of
politics, which would end up
costing Robespierre his life.All in It Together England
in the Early 21st Century
by Alwyn Turner
Profile £20For the first draft of very
recent history, there’s nomore entertaining writer than
Turner. His account of the
Blair and Cameron years is
a gloriously funny romp, from
the strange career of Roy
“Chubby” Brown to the
slow-motion collapse of
Gordon Brown’s premiership.
But amid the welter of
anecdotes he also has
a compelling argument about
the loss of trust, the rise of
populism and the emergence
of Nigel Farage as the era’s
most influential politician.As We Were The First World
War: Tales from a Broken
World, Week-by-Week
by David Hargreaves and
Margaret-Louise O’Keeffe
White Fox £100Compiled in four volumes by
two retired teachers, this is
an extraordinarily ambitious
project to chronicle the First
World War week by week,
based on thousands of letters,
diaries and memoirs. It’s
history as total immersion,
breezily written and light on
analysis, with events and
impressions jostling together,
apparently at random. Yet all
human life is here: soldiers,
civilians, statesmen, a mosaic
of moving individual stories.
As one entry puts it: “What is
tragedy if it is not personal?”The Burgundians A Vanished
Empire: A History of 1111 Years
and One Day
by Bart Van Loo, translated by
Nancy Forest-Flier
Head of Zeus £30A sumptuous feast of a book,
Van Loo’s history of medieval
Burgundy was a bestseller in
his native Belgium, and it’s
easy to see why. He recreates
the world of Ghent and Bruges
in loving detail, a bustling,
blood-soaked landscape of
quays, merchants and money
changers. The narrative takes
in everything from banquets
and battles to altarpieces and
assassinations. But the stars
are the dukes: sex-crazed
Philip the Good, repressed
Charles the Bold, endlessly
scheming to outdo their
French rivals.The Making of Oliver
Cromwell
by Ronald Hutton
Yale UP £25Cromwell is not just one of the
greatest characters in British
history, he’s one of the most▶
BOOKS OF THE YEAR
The Ruin of All
Witches
Life and Death
in the New
World
by Malcolm
Gaskill
Allen Lane £20The story of a single
witchcraft case in a remote
New England settlement in
1651, this is a bona fide
historical classic.
Meticulously recreating the
world of colonial America,
Gaskill focuses on a troubledcouple, Hugh and Mary
Parsons, who crossed the
Atlantic to find themselves
in a brooding, dangerous
landscape of witches and
devils, suspicion and
paranoia. He’s especially
good at getting inside his
subjects’ minds: the
frustrated hopes and
nagging fears rattling round
their heads at night. This is
historical writing of the very
highest class, impeccably
researched and written with
supreme imagination and
wisdom.OUR BOOK OF THE YEAR
Decline and fall Robespierre,
painted by Pierre VigneronGETTY IMAGESWatch out for our pick of
2021’s best fiction, crime
fiction, thrillers, historical
fiction, memoir and
biography, sports books,
gardening titles, and
science, thought and
pop and rock booksNEXT WEEK
BOOKS OF THE YEAR,
PART 2
34 28 November 2021