1 comments about The Last Days of Charles I.

1. For anyone interested in the history of the English monarchy and the Civil War, this is a great book. It is well researched, elegantly written, and provides a fascinating insight into this melancholy, intellectual and kind-hearted man who proved himself, in many ways, spectacularly ill-suited for kingship. This book deserves to have a place in every history lover's shelf!

No comments about Macclesfield (Images of England).

No comments about Blackburn (Images of England).

2 comments about The Surname Detective: Investigating Surname Distribution in England, 1086-present day.

1. This is a first for me with writing a review but since I have gotten involved with putting the family history in book form. I have needed many extra reseach books. The Surname Detective is just what it claims. It give family names and traces the movement into different parts of the original country and immigrations of the families. The maps are helpful to me. I do think it is over priced because it is not an everyday working or reading volume and it is generic. But if you are wondering about your family name and can afford it, I always recomend factual data.



2. It's a very cold day in Hades indeed when I give a negative review to genealogy book - particularly one on English genealogy. However, this book was simply terrible.

   The premise - that interesting insights into surname distributions and migration patterns in England may be determined by reviewing and then comparing different sorts of record types which include surnames - is a fascinating one.

   Unfortunately, the author approaches the subject in a chatty, "let's ask the questions and find the answers together" fashion which is almost completely unreadable. This "shared voyage of discovery" methodology makes reading this book a bore. I say this having read several hundred genealogy books, so it's not the subject matter I refer to as boring - it's the writing style.

   Another problem with the book is that it is written in "British English" complete with colloqialisms and inside-jokes which were off-putting even to an unreformed Anglophile such as myself.

   Besides stylistic issues, this volume does not examine the source materials used for its study with anything approaching enough criticality. Using telephone directory discs for modern surname distributions is a great idea except for all the ex-directory people, the multiple telephones per household slowly becoming more common, and the inherent errors in any phone book.

   For the next historic period of surname distribution, the author's review of the Victorian censuses reads like a schoolboy's essay. The problems of thorough coverage regarding the censuses are legion yet they are brushed aside by the author.

   This book is a tough read and its premise is not particularly well argued. If you're an English surnames junkie, you'll want to give it a go (tidbits like Fuller, Tucker, and Walker all being regional variations of the same occupation are nice little gems) but as a general genealogy work for hunting English ancestors, this book is to be avoided.

No comments about Life of a Haunted House: The Barnstable House of Barnstable, Massachusetts--Genealogy of a Real Haunted House.

No comments about Tyrells of England.

No comments about Bygone Godstone (Bygone series).

No comments about Return to Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village in the 21st Century.

1 comments about Royal Family, Royal Lovers: King James of England and Scotland.

1. King James, sponsor of the famous Authorized "King James" Bible, is often lauded as defender of the faith by some who worship his 1611 publication as the be-all and end-all of all English Bible translations. Many hagiographic works abound, but Bergeron's isn't one of those.

   While writing his Basilicon Doron to attack the sin of sodomy, James himself used his royal position to shield himself from such a charge against himself. Bergeron digs up the historical dirt and shares a contemporary's view of the hypocrisy, a diary entry in 1622 by one Simonds D'Ewes of a conversation he'd had with a friend:
   "Of things I discoursed with him that weere secrett as of the sinne of sodomye, how frequente it was in this wicked cittye, and if God did not provide some wonderfull blessing against it, wee could not but expect some horrible punishment for it; especially it being as wee had probable cause to feare, a sinne in the prince as well as the people, which God is for the most part the chastiser of himselfe, because noe man else indeed dare reprove or tell him them of ther faults." (Bergeron, p. 183)

   Many more pieces of evidence are to be found in those pages, and what emerges from Bergeron's picture is that of a great man who was both King of England and Scotland and quite human.

No comments about Supernatural Pennines.