1 comments about Diana, Princess of Wales, 1961-97: A Tribute in Photographs (Diana Princess of Wales).

1. This book is very well designed with all its colored pictures that are just so beautiful. Please visit angelfire.com/journal/grahamw to see my sale of this book.

No comments about Grandduchy of Hessen (Map Guide to German Parish Registers, Volume 1).

2 comments about Thames: Sacred River.

1. Chapeau! Kudos! Peter Ackroyd has done a terrific job with this book. From his early novel _Hawksmoor_, Ackroyd has evolved into the chronicler par excellence of London, both through his book of the same name and by the flavour of London life in his biographies of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Sir Thomas More, Dickens, Blake, and other works (both fictional and non).
   
   This cornucopia has history, geography, geology, spirituality, sociology, literary and cultural referencing, psychology, life cycles, transport, trade, ecology, hedonism, commercialism. It's a staggeringly accomplished chronicle and a worthy tribute to the liquid heart of London.
   
   Ackroyd ranges masterfully from facts and statistics - some of them fascinating - through to dreams and legends. Although London dominates, this deals with the villages and towns along the Thames - e.g., Windsor as represented by the poet Alexander Pope. The historical thread moves from the prehistoric river, and the Thames Caesar conquered, through to the modern flood protection afforded by the Thames Barrier. Notwithstanding its erudition, the flow is ceaseless and the touch light, so that it's an easy, satisfying read.
   
   Thankfully, Ackroyd controls his trademark fascination in filth and murk aspects, balancing them judiciously with the elevated, refined and spiritual. He delightedly describes the Fleet as "merd-urinous", "wholly rank" and "the excremental centre of London's polluted life". This is tempered by the view "at twilight, a soft grey, a lacustrine light."
   
   With its buried coins and weapons, syringes, severed heads, the river is a "depository of past lives" but Ackroyd gives us a final vision of "estuarial river" rushing to the "sea's embrace."
   
   I can do no better than let the chapters speak for themselves:
   
   1. "The Mirror of history": river as fact (statistics) and metaphor - the "museum of Englishness", symbolizing the national character. Time of the river: Hydrologic and geologic.
   2. Father Thames - river deities, Thames Basin, birth/source aspects
   3. Issuing Forth: tributaries, especially the Fleet.
   4. Beginnings: Ice Ages, barrows, and henges; Caesar and Vikings.
   5. The sacred river - saints and ruins: includes Norman palaces, Westminster Abbey, monasteries(work and education), plague and fire.
   6.Elemental and Equal: riverine cycle/essence and social upheavals/revolutions.
   7. The working river -: River boats, London Bridge and subways, river law and conservation; the criminal element (theft, witches); watermen, porters, weir keepers.
   8. River of trade - wharves, mills, breweries, docks, modern decline - new financial districts e.g. Canary Wharf and Docklands.
   9. The Natural River: fog, wind, rain, the Thames Barrier (flood protection). Sacred woods and trees, villages, swans and whales (!)
   10. A stream of pleasure - pubs, sports, carnivals, Lord Mayor's pageant, physic gardens Contrasts with mortality, sewers, and typhus in the 18th-19th centuries.
   11. The healing spring - wells, hospitals, flowers. A rhapsodic chapter....
   12. The river of art - Turner, Conrad, Jerome - chroniclers (the 16th-century antiquarian John Leland), novelists (Dickens, Grahame), poets Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Shelley, Arnold.
   13. Shadows and depth - Visions of Carroll and Traherne. Local history; dreams and legends.
   14. The river of death - riverine findings (coins, weapons, syringes, severed heads). Mythology. Suicides, murders, drownings.
   15. The river's end - the estuarial river which "rushes to the sea's embrace."
   
   A grand achievement. Prepare to be delighted, amazed - and moved.



2. I have just spent an enjoyable couple of weeks meandering through this book acquiring all manner of new knowledge.
   
   While this book is a treat for the prose alone, the knowledge presented had me wanting to rush in many different directions to explore new possibilities. The story of the Thames is as much a part of British history as any conventional reportage of people and events.
   
   The book would have benefitted from some tighter editing. As written, the text seems to suggest that Claudius was in Britain only a decade or so after Julius Caesar instead of almost 90 years later. While in the lifetime of the river itself this time difference is almost infinitesimal, it jars and is unnecessary.
   
   I found myself drifting in the book: fascinated by the facts, interested by the speculation and intrigued by the possibilities. 'Water is utterly mysterious'
   
   'Thames' contains a bibliography which provides a starting point for further exploration.
   
   Highly recommended, but not necessarily as an authoritative source of historical dates.
   
   Jennifer Cameron-Smith

3 comments about Henry Plantagenet.

1. In Henry Plantagenet, Richard Barber has produced a short, lively, commendably readable account of Henry Plantagenet's life and reign. The book never drags and is related in a novel-like narrative that keeps one's interest through every page. Henry II was one of Englands most intriguing rulers at battle with France and family. The husband of Eleanor of Aquitane, the father of Richard the Lion Heart and John Lackland, his story is one to behold and Barber's effort is a top notch resource with which to do so.



2. This is a average summary of this great King of England. It summarizes the challenges Henry Plangagenet faced when he assumed control of the Kingdom and his consolidation of his holdings in France. Henry II was one of the true great rulers
   of his time, defying the Church and France to lead his realm. Since Barber wrote this book back in the sixties, it is not up to date on new research into Plantagenet rulers. Also Barber confuses the reader with the names of many people that were not a central theme of the King's time. The names are the most confusing aspect of this book, and thus the rating of three stars.



3. Richard Barber published his first book at the age of 20, followed by this title in 1964 when he was 23. That may be why "Henry Plantagenet" reads and moves well, as if narrated rather than written, with the youthful enthusiasm of a young scholar not yet burdened by the need to justify every fact to academics. Barber released his current edition in 2003.
   
   He does a fine job of breathing life into Henry II's 34-year reign, which needs his touch because Henry II may be the most under-appreciated king in English history. This formidable, life-long warrior is eclipsed by his son Richard Lionheart's military feats. A decisive man with extraordinary energy, Henry is upstaged for glamor and charisma by his consort through 36 years of love and hate, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Even as a villain - women by the score, anger-management problems to rival Zeus, a tirade that may have ended Thomas Becket's life and a rampage that exiled Eleanor to England for fifteen years - even as a villain, Henry II is upstaged by his youngest, King John.
   
   What did Henry do well? Apart from winning wars and battling prelates, he made major, enduring changes to English law and jurisprudence, including property and contract law, moves that stimulated commerce. But that makes poor press. Barber captures the moods and actions of the young king and his maturing reign of constancy amidst constant strife and domestic chaos. He integrates Henry and a large supporting cast into their turbulent times very well.
   
   In addition to writing about Arthurian legend and medieval history, Barber has been a publisher of medieval studies for almost four decades. His breadth of knowledge shows. "Henry Plantagenet" makes subtle links across time and dynasties that might escape a lesser historian's art.
   
   Robert Fripp, author of
   "Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine"

No comments about The Making of Urban Europe, 1000-1994.

2 comments about Ann Of Cleves: Fourth Wife of Henry VIII.

1. This book pulls together a good amount of information about the life of Henry VIII's most neglected queen, Anne of Cleves. The chapters on her life following her divorce are especially interesting. Saaler, however, spends a fair amount of space contrasting Henry's divorce from Anne to his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and it is here that she makes a number of mistakes. She makes numerous references to Emperor Charles V being Catherine's uncle, when he was actually her nephew. She also states that Catherine was precontracted to Henry's brother Arthur, but that they were never married. They did in fact marry, and the entire divorce question turned on whether or not that marriage had ever been consumated. These may not be grave errors, but they do tend to detract from Saaler's credibility for the reader who well-versed in Tudor history.



2. Ms. Saaler tells us that Catherine of Aragon did not mind being divorced- had no problem with being put aside by Henry VIII. Not true! If this error is any indication of Ms. Saalor's research, then the entire book needs to be read with a huge grain of salt. Very disappointing.

No comments about European Orders and Decorations to 1945 (Shire Library).

5 comments about The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, Revised and Updated (Kings & Queens of England).

1. If you enjoy and read novels, biographies or history books about England and Europe this is a must have reference book. Very condensed, dry and factual history but a tremendous help in keeping people, time and places in order and perspective.



2. This book is really good. I haven't finished it yet, because I am really trying to learn about these kings and queens, and placing them in history. Having lived 60 years, I am sure I was taught some of this in school, but I retained the American history and very little of the English history. These chapters on each monarch are interesting. Fraser has done a good job presenting them and giving you enough info without all the stuffy details that might exist. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is interested in the English Monarchy - I have really enjoyed all that I have read. And it also makes many of Shakespeare's characters believable.



3. This book has long been a permanent part of my library. I had a very well thumbed pocket-sized edition which I bought 30 years ago and I reluctantly had to replace it when it literally fell to pieces. This new larger illustrated edition is very impressive but it doesn't make for easy reading in bed.



4. While I normally don't applaud those who use this space for non-reviews, I have to do so here. After ten years of doing monthly business with Amazon, I simply can't do it anymore. They constantly lie about low-price promises for pre-orders, lie about in stock items, lie about shipping. They refuse to respond with english speaking customer service people. As long as all you deal with is their automated systems, all is well. But the second you deal with a person, it's a joke. Amazon is the WalMart of the online world - constantly employing the lowest common denominator.
   
   I'm sick of accepting the service Amazon provides and until and unless they can change things, I'm done with them.
   
   By the way - the book is pretty good! Just the amount of info I wanted. I'm pretty familiar with US history, but woefully ignorant of most of the rest of the world. This should help - at least with the tiny island!



5. This book on CD is informative and may serve as a good overview, but it is like having someone read to you out of Wikepedia about each King and Queen. There are at times interisting detail, such as Willima I corpse bursting and there being a horrible stench. This book does not have that something extra that makes for good story telling. The other negative on the book is the introduction is just too long. What the book does is give a good overview of each king and queen of England.

No comments about Our Glasgow: Memories of Life in Disappearing Britain.

No comments about The All New Surnames of Ireland.