“in because he calls his book Arthur's Britain.”
Arthur's Britain by Leslie Alcock
Host on The Rest Is HistoryKing Arthur: The Truth Behind the Legend (Part 4)
Host of The Rest Is History
23 books recommended · 20 episodes
Books they recommend that someone else wrote.
“in because he calls his book Arthur's Britain.”
Arthur's Britain by Leslie Alcock
Host on The Rest Is HistoryKing Arthur: The Truth Behind the Legend (Part 4)
“as nicholas hyam in his recent book king arthur the making of the legend wittily puts it celtic gods uniformly bore Celtic names.”
King Arthur by N. J. Higham
Host on The Rest Is HistoryKing Arthur: The Truth Behind the Legend (Part 4)
“so that's a thrillingly dramatic moment in the history of the kings of britain by jeffrey of monmouth so jeffrey of monmouth wrote that in the late 1130s it was the british bunkbuster…”
Why: It packaged and presented Arthur as a towering figure of European stature and invented much of the Arthurian legend.
The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth
Host on The Rest Is HistoryKing Arthur: The Mysteries of Merlin (Part 3)
“And there's no romance that illustrates this better than the greatest of all the romances, which is Mallory's Mort Dartha.”
Why: It is described as the greatest of all the romances, offering a moving and tragic depiction of chivalry and human flaws.
Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory
Host on The Rest Is HistoryKing Arthur: Lancelot and the Round Table (Part 2)
“all of this is laid out in the landmark study of the life and times of sir thomas mallory the title of the book and it's by pjc field…”
Why: It is a landmark study that remains unchallenged in its conclusions about Malory's life.
The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory by P. J. C. Field
Host on The Rest Is HistoryKing Arthur: The Once & Future King (Part 1)
“Geoffrey of Monmouth writes the book that kind of lights the touch paper of Arthur Mania. And it's a history of the kings of Britain…”
Why: It lights the touch paper of Arthur Mania and creates an addictive world of wonder.
The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth
Host on The Rest Is HistoryKing Arthur: The Once & Future King (Part 1)
“so to quote Garrett Mattingly this wonderful book on the Spanish Armada that he wrote back in the 1940s but it's still great he said of Elizabeth her foreign policy was to have no foreign policy…”
Why: It is still a great book that provides wonderful insight into Elizabeth's foreign policy.
The Spanish Armada by G Mattingly
Host on The Rest Is HistoryElizabeth I vs The Catholics: Killing the Queen of Scots (Part 6)
“And to quote John Guy from his wonderful biography of Mary, like Elizabeth, Mary enjoyed two courses at both dinner and supper.”
Why: It is described as a wonderful biography.
Mary Queen of Scots by John Guy
Host on The Rest Is HistoryElizabeth I vs The Catholics: Killing the Queen of Scots (Part 6)
“this is stephen alford in his great book the watchers says he's secret and secretive a man who had traveled to the uttermost in the cipher…”
Why: It is a great book describing the secretive spies in Walsingham's employ.
The Watchers by Stephen Alford
Host on The Rest Is HistoryElizabeth I vs The Catholics: Killing the Queen of Scots (Part 6)
“So there is a brilliant book on this by a scholar called Carol Doughty, The Raft of Odysseus.”
Why: It contains valuable details and themes that belong to the contemporary world of its audience.
The Raft of Odysseus by Carol Dougherty
Host on The Rest Is HistoryThe Odyssey: Hero of the Trojan Horse (Part 1)
“But he wrote one called Burr, where he told the whole story from Burr's perspective.”
Why: The speaker enjoyed the book and its unique perspective on Burr and Hamilton.
Burr by Gore Vidal
Host on The Rest Is HistoryHamilton: Duel to the Death (Part 3)
“And just to explain for people who have no idea about rugby or what it involves. I will quote from John Carlin, who wrote an entire book Playing the Enemy about this 1995 final.”
Playing the Enemy by John Carlin
Host on The Rest Is HistorySouth Africa: Mandela and the Death of Apartheid (Part 6)
“So that sonnet that you read is part of a sequence that in the opinion of most critics rank second only to the sonnet sequence written by Shakespeare himself. The sonnet sequence is called Astrophil and Stella.”
Why: Ranked by critics as second only to Shakespeare's sonnets.
Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney
Host on The Rest Is HistoryElizabeth I vs The Catholics: The Shadow War (Part 5)
“So to quote Deborah Cadbury, who's written a comprehensive and I have to say very harrowing biography of Louis Charles called The Lost King of France.”
Why: It is a comprehensive and harrowing biography of Louis Charles.
The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury
Host on The Rest Is HistoryThe Terror: The Execution of Marie Antoinette (Part 3)
“And so it's his principal source for Tale of Two Cities, which is, I mean, amazing, the bestselling novel in English.”
Why: It is an amazing, bestselling novel in English.
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Host on The Rest Is HistoryThe Terror: The Reign of Robespierre (Part 2)
“And there's a brilliant book on this by a guy called Dan Edelstein, The Terror of Natural Right. This is why at the festival, the supreme being is symbolized, to quote Edelstein, primarily as a disembodied eye.”
The Terror of Natural Right by Dan Edelstein
Host on The Rest Is HistoryThe Terror: Killing God (Part 5)
“and to quote Ruth Skur in her biography of Rosbier, this second cardboard statue was fair, majestic and only slightly singed.”
Fatal Purity by Ruth Scurr
Host on The Rest Is HistoryThe Terror: Killing God (Part 5)
“So R.R. Palmer, who we've been quoting quite a lot, his brilliant book on the Committee of Public Safety. I mean, he says that Robespierre regarded dictatorship as an interim phase, necessary rather than desirable, is beyond a possibility of question.”
Twelve Who Ruled by R. R. Palmer
Host on The Rest Is HistoryThe Terror: Killing God (Part 5)
“so i've been looking forward to this since we started the rest is history because when i was a teenager i read a series of books by colleen mcculloch i think he wrote the thorn birds and she wrote this roman sequence in which the marius sulla rivalry played a huge part…”
Why: It was brilliant and absolute catnip for a teenage boy interested in Rome.
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
Host on The Rest Is HistoryRoman Civil War: Rise of the General (Part 1)
“And Alan Stewart, in his biography of Philip Sydney, A Double Life, suggests that maybe William wanted Sydney to be his son-in-law.”
A Double Life by Tammy Stewart
Host on The Rest Is HistoryElizabeth I vs The Catholics: The Shadow War (Part 5)
“There's actually a brilliant, it's brilliantly phrased by Garrett Mattingly, who wrote one of my favourite ever books on the defeat of the Spanish Armada.”
Why: It is one of the speaker's favorite books.
The Defeat of the Spanish Armada by Garrett Mattingly
Host on The Rest Is HistoryElizabeth I vs The Catholics: The Queen’s Spymaster (Part 1)
“In his book that you mentioned, his brilliant book, A Nervous Splendor, frederick morton calls them manipulative industrious strangely modest inexorable decent stodgy staunch drabness was their secret drabness and patience and the man who embodies this…”
Why: It offers brilliant insights into the drab, patient character of the Habsburgs.
A Nervous Splendor by Frederic Morton
Host on The Rest Is HistoryA Murderous Affair: The Habsburgs’ Greatest Scandal (Part 1)
More from this conversation
“So that is the climactic scene from Frederick Norton's great book, A Nervous Splendor, which is a portrait of van der Sierkla Vienna at the end of the 1880s.”
“So there's a great book on the Habsburgs by Martin Rady. And he has this whole thing about how this is the age when people…”
Why: It explains how people began drawing national maps and inventing fixed national identities.
Habsburgs by Martyn Rady
Host on The Rest Is HistoryA Murderous Affair: The Habsburgs’ Greatest Scandal (Part 1)
“Benjamin Franklin, The Religious Life of a Founding Father. And Kear's argument, essentially, is that Franklin does remain tethered to the teachings that he's adopted as a child in this Puritan household.”
Why: A brilliant book on the Christian character of Franklin's folksiness.
Benjamin Franklin by Thomas S. Kidd
Host on The Rest Is HistoryFranklin: Revenge of the American Genius (Part 2)
Their own books, or books they discussed with the author. Not counted as recommendations.
“They lose moral self-confidence. And I wrote about this in Dominion. And I was amazed the degree to which kind of theological anxieties about whether apartheid was part of God's plan actually played a crucial role…”
Dominion by Tom Holland
Host on The Rest Is HistorySouth Africa: Mandela and the Death of Apartheid (Part 6)
Named without an opinion attached.
“It is not, unlike Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, this is not a sort of a fantasy blockbuster.”
The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth
Host on The Rest Is HistoryKing Arthur: The Truth Behind the Legend (Part 4)
“overseas listeners won't get this but when we were growing up in the sort of 70s and 80s there were these books called ladybird books that everybody in England Red.”
Ladybird Book by Elizabeth Jenner
Host on The Rest Is HistoryElizabeth I vs The Catholics: A Treacherous Conspiracy (Part 4)
“by a german writer called max weber who wrote a book the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism and weber was fascinated by the question of how it was that franklin was able to assume that the morality that he was…”
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber
Host on The Rest Is HistoryFranklin: Revenge of the American Genius (Part 2)
“reading about them kind of remind me of 19th century novels that always feature these kind of things, Madame Bovary or something like that, where there are small scale tragedies…”
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Host on The Rest Is HistoryThe Terror: The Reign of Robespierre (Part 2)
“Tom Carlisle sees the revolution as the equivalent of the flood or the apocalypse in the book of Revelation, this titanic biblical reckoning…”
The Book of Revelation by William Milligan
Host on The Rest Is HistoryThe Terror: The Reign of Robespierre (Part 2)
“That was the great Victorian hero, Sir Harry Flashman, remembering his first meeting with the Emperor Theodros II in his memoir, Flashman on the March.”
Flashman on the March by George MacDonald Fraser
Host on The Rest Is HistoryQueen Victoria’s Revenge: Storming the Citadel (Part 2)
“So that was the sinister Henry or Henry Duke of Guise as ventriloquized by Christopher Marlowe in his tragedy The Massacre at Paris which he wrote in 1593 and…”
The Massacre at Paris by Christopher Marlowe
Host on The Rest Is HistoryElizabeth I vs The Catholics: A Massacre in Paris (Part 2)
“I mean, there are elements of it in Virgil's poem, The Aeneid.”
The Aeneid by Virgil
Host on The Rest Is HistoryThe Odyssey: Return of the King (Part 2)
“And Franklin writes up this story in his autobiography, which is, I guess, I mean, probably the first great classic of American literature. It's certainly an absolutely groundbreaking autobiography.”
Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
Host on The Rest Is HistoryFranklin: Revenge of the American Genius (Part 2)
“So Woody Holton in Liberty is Sweet. He doesn't agree with that characterization. He caricatures it as one long flirtation with female aristocrats.”
Liberty Is Sweet by Woody Holton
Host on The Rest Is HistoryFranklin: Revenge of the American Genius (Part 2)