• BOOKS & PODCASTS
THIS MONTH’S BEST HISTORICAL READS AND LISTENS
BOOK OF THE MONTH
Tutankhamun: Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma
By Joyce Tyldesley
Headline, £22, hardback, 320 pages
The tale of Tutankhamun – the 14th-century BC boy-king whose tomb and its glittering grave goods were discovered a century ago – is among the most famous in all of global history and archaeology. Yet, as Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley investigates in her new book, it is also one deeply clouded by myth and misunderstanding that spawned amid the media frenzy. Tyldesley pieces together as clear a picture as possible of the pharaoh’s life, death and afterlife, using expert insight and a wealth of evidence to illuminate a compelling character and his universe.
Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962
By Max Hastings
William Collins, £30, hardback, 576 pages
Sixty years ago this autumn, the world came perilously close to all-out nuclear war and the abyss of Armageddon in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The simmering Cold War tensions and political miscommunications that brought the United States and Soviet Union to the brink are expertly sketched in the latest offering from Sir Max Hastings. Among archive documents, he weaves in eyewitness accounts from a diverse cast, from leaders to Cuban peasants. Yet Abyss also soberingly draws explicit parallels between these historical events and the modern world, namely Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The World: A Family History
By Simon Sebag Montefiore
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £35, hardback, 1,312 pages
Here’s an intriguing proposition: a history of the entire world, viewed through the prism of family. That is something that everyone, regardless of their time or location, has in common. Some of those families are going to be famous dynasties that rewrote the narratives of whole regions – from the Caesars and the Ottomans to the Habsburgs and the House of Saud – yet others will not be as well-known, or had an influence that was felt in less direct and dramatic ways. What unites them, in Simon Sebag Montefiore’s masterful and truly staggering account, which begins 950,000 years ago, are the loving and messy relationships to be found in each one.
The Book of Phobias and Manias: A History of the World in 99 Obsessions
By Kate Summerscale
Wellcome Collection, £16.99, hardback, 256 pages
What can the obsessions of the people of a particular place and time tell us about the world in which they lived? That’s the question at the heart of this insightful, sensitive look at phobias and manias experienced in history, from the medieval era to the 21st century. These range from a fear of spiders (arachnophobia) or public speaking (glossophobia), to the compulsion to hoard or to steal. The ways these fixations are forged by wider society are fascinating.
Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World
By Kate Mosse
Mantle, £20, hardback, 432 pages
Inspired by her great-grandmother, who found fame as a novelist only to be almost forgotten, writer Kate Mosse set out to shine a light on other women who have been historically overlooked. The result is a diverse, globe-trotting compendium of nearly 1,000 women – scientists and spies, activists and actors, and so on – whose talent and courage deserves to be better known. Beautifully illustrated, this is a celebratory corrective to male accounts of world history.
FICTION
An Ocean Apart
By Sarah Lee
Pan Macmillan, £20, hardback, 336 pages
February, 1954: Ruby and her sister Connie are heading across the Atlantic from Barbados to England, where the two young women plan to build new lives for themselves as they train as nurses in the nascent NHS. Yet when they arrive, nothing is quite as they had expected. They are not met with welcome arms by everybody, and secrets they left back home cast a shadow from thousands of miles away. Sarah Lee’s debut novel draws on the real experiences of members of the Windrush generation – including her own mother – to create an evocative tale of postwar Britain.
WHAT TO LISTEN TO…
Each month we bring you three of our favourite podcasts from the BBC and HistoryExtra
Torn
Sunglasses, a miniskirt, and a fisherman’s sweater: either this is a strange combination for an autumn trend, or it is a sample of the wardrobe staples whose histories are explored in a new podcast series. Each episode sees curator and broadcaster Dr Gus Casely-Hayford unpick the surprising stories of seemingly innocuous garments, revealing what they tell us about wider narratives of innovation, inequality and conflict.
The Bomb
First aired in 2020, the first season of the BBC podcast series The Bomb charted the progress of the Manhattan Project, from the first harnessing of nuclear power to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The second season turns attention to the life and deeds of Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist who, during and after World War II, passed atomic secrets from the west to the Soviets.
The history of Robin Hood
The latest in HistoryExtra’s ‘Everything You Wanted to Know’ series, which answers listeners’ questions and popular internet search queries, follows Dr Sean McGlynn into Sherwood Forest to track down the real Robin Hood. Did he really rob from the rich to give to the poor? Did his co-workers include Friar Tuck and Little John? And did his dress code really consist of green tights and a jaunty little hat?