To be immortalized by Shakespeare is often also to be caricatured by him; a sumptuous new biography of King Henry IV admirably brings its royal subject out of the Bard's shadow.
Read MoreThe Earl of Gallipoli
/The typical image of Winston Churchill comes from the dark days of World War II: a fat, old, bald Prime Minister eloquently defying Hitler's Germany. But before there was a monument there was a man, as an engaging new biography brings to light.
Read MoreEntitled to Extravagance: Some Historical Fictions of Anthony Burgess
/Some of Anthony Burgess' most accomplished inventions roam into the past, to Shakespeare and Marlowe's England and Jesus' Judea. How well has his historical fiction stood up across the years?
Read MoreGordon's Alive!
/He started an artist on the path to glory, sold a million toys, and inspired a cult classic movie: He's Flash Gordon, and his earliest Sunday adventures are getting a deluxe reprint series.
Read MoreThe Tudor Secret, by C.W. Gortner
/C.W. Gortner kicks off his potboiling Tudor chronicles with a fast-paced novel of conspiracy (and, of course, shrouded paternity) in the court of Edward VI
Read MoreKeeping Up With The Tudors: Bernard’s Theorem
/At her trial, Anne Boleyn was accused of adultery, witchcraft, and incest - charges long mocked by historians. But a new book asks: is it possible Anne was actually guilty?
Read MoreOn the Bunny Slopes of Helicon
/Steven Moore's big new book seeks to give an 'alternative history' to that most familiar of literary forms, the novel. But at what point does history become wishful thinking?
Read MoreThe Nautilus
/When John Ruskin, the foremost architectural critic of the Victorian era, discovered Venice, he fell in love. An elaborate new work paints the picture in great detail.
Read MoreThe Glorious Revolution of 1688 was peaceful, orderly, and above all sensible, or so says towering Victorian historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. Two new books look at the man and the Revolution he so indelibly described.
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