For People Who Devour Books

Book Reviews by
Piers Brendon

From the March 2026 Issue

Woman of Her Time

Wartime Letters: London and Moscow 1941–1945

By Kathleen Harriman (Edited by Geoffrey Roberts)

From the February 2026 Issue

The Kremlin’s Long Reach

The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin’s Greatest Enemy

By Josh Ireland

From the October 2025 Issue

Stocks & Scares

1929: The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History

By Andrew Ross Sorkin

From the September 2025 Issue

From Myanmar to Manhattan

Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations, and the Untold Story of the 1960s

By Thant Myint-U

From the August 2025 Issue

Tale of Two Allies

The Last Titans: Churchill and de Gaulle

By Richard Vinen

From the July 2025 Issue

Diamonds & Bust

The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes

By William Kelleher Storey

From the June 2025 Issue

Land of Dopes & Tories

The Benson Diaries: Selections from the Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson

By Eamon Duffy & Ronald Hyam (edd)

From the April 2025 Issue

Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll

The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West

By Shaun Walker

From the March 2025 Issue

Freedom Readers

The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War

By Charlie English

From the December 2024 Issue

Queen of Peking

Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson

By Paul French

From the August 2024 Issue

Mass Murderers with PhDs

Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich

By Richard J Evans

From the July 2024 Issue

Wizard of Westminster

Rivals in the Storm: How Lloyd George Seized Power, Won the War and Lost His Government

By Damian Collins

From the March 2024 Issue

Bones of Contention

Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion

By Michael Taylor

From the February 2024 Issue

Freak Shows, Peepshows & Sunday School

Little Englanders: Britain in the Edwardian Era

By Alwyn Turner

From the September 2023 Issue

Ticket to Ride but No Trains

A Northern Wind: Britain 1962–65

By David Kynaston

From the June 2023 Issue

Taipans, Pirates and Courtesans

Fortune’s Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong

By Vaudine England

From the March 2023 Issue

I Believe in Yesterday

Homelands: A Personal History of Europe

By Timothy Garton Ash

From the October 2022 Issue

Delusions of Grandeur

How Britain Broke the World: War, Greed and Blunders from Kosovo to Afghanistan, 1997–2022

By Arthur Snell

From the July 2022 Issue

Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her

Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

By Henry Kissinger

From the March 2022 Issue

Kiss & Shell

False Prophets: British Leaders’ Fateful Fascination with the Middle East from Suez to Syria

By Nigel Ashton