5 Great History Reads Coming Your Way Soon.
It's a new year which means new exciting history books are coming your way. Here is what Inside History recommends for your next read.
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With the legal bit out of the way, here are the five books that we are really looking forward to between now and April.
Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer
In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany simply ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the GDR presented a radically different German identity to anything that had come before, and anything that exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics.
In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer offers a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country. Beginning with the bitter experience of German Marxists exiled by Hitler, she traces the arc of the state they would go on to create, first under the watchful eye of Stalin, and then in an increasingly distinctive German fashion. From the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, to the relative prosperity of the 1970s, and on to the creaking foundations of socialism in the mid-1980s, Hoyer argues that amid oppression and frequent hardship, East Germany was yet home to a rich political, social and cultural landscape, a place far more dynamic than the Cold War caricature often painted in the West.
Powerfully told, and drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews, letters and records, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, the one beyond the Wall.
Released 6th April 2023
Pre-order your copy here.
The Windsors at War: The Nazi threat to the Crown by Alexander Larman
At the outbreak of WW2, the British monarchy was in a state of turmoil. The previous king, Edward VIII, had abdicated the throne, leaving his unprepared and terrified brother Bertie to become George VI. Meanwhile, as the now-Duke of Windsor awaited the decree that would allow him to marry his mistress Wallis Simpson, he took an increasing interest in the expansionist plans of the Führer of Germany.
The Windsors at War tells the story of the turbulent and seismic decade in between 1937 and 1947, including the bombing of Buckingham Palace in May 1940, the Duke of Windsor's ill-advised visit to Germany in October 1937 and the death of the Duke of Kent in a plane crash in August 1942. It answers a simple question: how did this squabbling, dysfunctional family manage to put their differences aside and unite to help win the greatest conflict of their lifetimes?
Released 9th March 2023
Pre-order your copy here.
The Last Witch of Scotland by Philip Paris
Inspired by the extraordinary true story of the last person in Britain to be executed for witchcraft, The Last Witch of Scotland reimagines how Janet Horne and her daughter came to be accused, and their subsequent fight to prove their innocence in a society so biased against women.
Aila is beautiful, disfigured, disabled, highly intelligent and outspoken … a dangerous combination for a woman in the early 18th century. When Aila and Janet move to a remote area in the Highlands her appearance, and Janet’s dementia, arise suspicion amongst the local population, especially the new minister, a man obsessed with cleansing the world of witches. Aila’s life is further turned upside down when she meets Jack, the leader of a travelling troupe of performers, and the two characters make an immediate and intimate connection because of similar previous trauma.
From the author of The Italian Chapel, this new historical fiction is a moving story of love, loyalty and sacrifice that sheds light on one of the country’s darkest, most complex and fascinating periods of social history.
Released 13 April 2023
Pre-order your copy here.
The Colour Storm by Damian Dibben
Enter the world of Renaissance Venice, where the competition for fame and fortune can mean life or death...
Artists flock here, not just for wealth and fame, but for revolutionary colour. Yet artist Giorgione 'Zorzo' Barbarelli's career hangs in the balance. Competition is fierce, and his debts are piling up. So when Zorzo hears a rumour of a mysterious new pigment, brought to Venice by the richest man in Europe, he sets out to acquire the colour and secure his name in history.
Winning a commission to paint a portrait of the man's wife, Sybille, Zorzo thinks he has found a way into the merchant's favour. Instead he finds himself caught up in a conspiracy that stretches across Europe and a marriage coming apart inside one of the city's most illustrious palazzos.
As the water levels rise and the plague creeps ever closer, an increasingly desperate Zorzo isn't sure whom he can trust.
Will Sybille prove to be the key to Zorzo's success, or the reason for his downfall?
Atmospheric and suspenseful, and filled with the famous artists of the era, The Colour Storm is an intoxicating story of art and ambition, love and obsession.
Out now
Get your copy here.
UPROAR!: Scandal, Satire and Printmakers in Georgian London by Alice Loxton
London, 1772: a young artist called Thomas Rowlandson is making his way through the grimy backstreets of the capital, on his way to begin his studies at the Royal Academy Schools. Within a few years, James Gillray and Isaac Cruikshank would join him in Piccadilly, turning satire into an artform, taking on the British establishment, and forever changing the way we view power.
Set against a backdrop of royal madness, political intrigue, the birth of modern celebrity, French revolution, American independence and the Napoleonic Wars, UPROAR! follows the satirists as they lampoon those in power, from the Prince Regent to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Their prints and illustrations deconstruct the political and social landscape with surreal and razor-sharp wit, as the three men vie with each other to create the most iconic images of the day.
Alice Loxton's writing fizzes with energy on every page, and never fails to convince us that Gillray and his gang profoundly altered British humour, setting the stage for everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Private Eye and Spitting Image today. This is a book that will cause readers to reappraise everything they think they know about genteel Georgian London, and see it for what it was - a time of UPROAR!
Released 2nd March 2023
Pre-order your copy here.
