BOOKS & PODCASTS THIS MONTH’S BEST HISTORICAL READS AND LISTENS
Rule, Nostalgia: A Backwards History of Britain By Hannah Rose Woods WH Allen, £20, hardback, 400 pages This look at how the past has been regarded and repackaged by generations of people in Britain offers a very literal backwards history – opening with the culture wars and political divisions of the 21st century, before investigating the nostalgia of periods including World War II and the Victorian era. It’s a fascinating exploration of why we turn to the past for comfort in times of crisis, and how history is used by those in power to shape present-day arguments.
Rogues, Rebels and Mavericks of the Middle Ages By John Brunton Amberley, £20, hardback, 320 pages
A Woman’s Game: The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Women’s Football By Suzanne Wrack Guardian Faber Publishing, £14.99, paperback, 256 pages As the UEFA Women’s Championship kicks off this summer, this book offers a lively, accessible history of women’s football. Suzanne Wrack traces its origins in the Victorian era, its huge popularity throughout the 1910s, and the politically and financially motivated 1921 ban that saw the game pushed to the sidelines for half a century. She also charts its triumphant return and the ways in which women’s football has had a huge impact far outside the realms of sport.
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There are few better ways of revealing a society’s constraints than profiling some of the unlucky, unlikely or plain unlikable people who found themselves chafing against those limits. This set of concise biographies filters the medieval world through the experiences of 22 such characters, including mercenary and pirate Eustace the Monk, philosopher and theologian William of Ockham, and Plantagenet peeress Margaret Pole. Together, they depict a deeply proscribed world in which non-compliance could have serious consequences – including, but not limited to, death.
