Mrs Thatcher and the Queen pretending to get on at the 1979 Commonwealth Heads of Government summit.
Welcome back to Reviews in History, your weekly digest of reviews of books and digital resources from across the subject.
Thanks for all your birthday present suggestions last week! As many of you pointed out, there are few tight domestic situations that high-quality chocolates can’t improve, and any potential crisis was averted. I also learnt a new acronym via a Twitter response – TMI … so I’ll get straight on with the reviews…
We begin with Philip Murphy’s Monarchy and the End of Empire: The House of Windsor, the British Government, and the Postwar Commonwealth. Ruth Craggs and the author discuss a carefully researched and beautifully presented book that chronicles the relationship between the monarchy, the UK government, and the decolonisation of the British Empire (no. 1610, with response here).
Then we turn to Elizabeth’s Bedfellows: An Intimate History of Elizabeth’s Court by Anna Whitelock. Nadia van Pelt believes this captivating book will appeal to a wide range of readers, from specialist academics, to a non-specialist public interested in Tudor history (no. 1609).
Next up is Steven M. Schroeder’s To Forget It All and Begin Anew: Reconciliation in Occupied Germany, 1944-1954. Camilo Erlichman thinks this book successfully introduces into the historiography the work of a number of hitherto neglected post-war institutions (no. 1608).
Finally, we have Gender, Nation and Conquest in the High Middle Ages: Nest of Deheubarth by Susan M. Johns, which Hanna Kilpi finds to be a useful addition to the scholarship, with its strengths outweighing its weaknesses (no. 1607).