If you can wait a little while, Tom Holland has a third book about Roman history out in July: Pax.

I've just finished **The Cheese and the Worms ** by Carlo Ginzburg. It's been on my reading list for a long while. However, it didn't quite engage my attention. The approach , which I understand was radical at the time, was to focus on the details of a specific individual of 'lower' status rather than the grand narratives of Kings. In this case, a miller in Italy with some rather heterodox views on Christianity, and who is brought to trial for this worldview. This microhistory was perhaps novel at the time, though much more common since.

Unfortunately, the book (more of an extended monograph, really) gets caught up in some particularly niche points of theology. There's not a lot about the miller himself, perhaps due to the lack of documentary evidence outside the trial.

Overall, not as exciting as I was hoping.

Has anyone got any good recommendations for a narrative history of the Dutch Golden Age? Ideally one that covers both politics and culture.

I've recently finished reading Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King. It tells the story of how the famous Renaissance artist was commissioned to create the stunning frescos on the Sistine Chapel. It provides a detailed account of the creatioin of this masterpiece, including all the fairly mundane aspects involved in creating such art. Ross King balances the character of Michelangelo with that of Raphael, who was also active in Rome at the same time as the ceiling was being frescoed. Raphael is an excellent contrast to the somewhat cantankerous Michelangelo. And the third principal in this story is Pope Julius II, who commissioned both of them, and is off warring across Italy for most of the story.

It's a well told tale. King is a excellent teller of Renaissance histories - I cannot recommend enough his Bookseller of Florence. He's also done a couple of other set pieces based around Renaissnace creations - one on Brunelleschi's Dome in Florence, and another on Leonardo's Last Supper. All are to be recommended.

(As as aside, I also read his novel Ex Libris, which is a bibliomystery set in the early days of the 17th century in Europe - sadly, whilst the first half of this is entertaining, it fades a bit towards the end...)

Lionel Hutz was disappointed in The Neverending Story...

Funnily enough, Dolnick references Fox Margalit's book in The Writing of the Gods. Will have to add it to the reading pile...

Recently finished two books.

The Writing of the Gods by Edward Dolnick is a narrarive telling of the race to crack hieroglyphs. Its main protagonists are Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion. It's a good story, though Dolnick is prone to meander at times, and sometimes repeats his key points - the book lacks flow somewhat. However, it has spurred me to sort out a ticket to the hieroglyphs exhibition currently on at the British Museum...

Have also read Princes of the Renaissance by Mary Hollingsworth. This is a lavishly illustrated telling of the warring Italian city-states during the later 15th and 16th centuries, told through the lens of the key families and dynasties. It's not quite the book I was hoping to read - I was hoping for more of an intellectual history of the Renaissance, but it was more about the power struggles. I found the sheer size of the cast to be a bit overwhelming and confusing, and got a bit lost in parts. I was also surprised that there wasn't a significant chapter on Florence and the Medicis.

The Bookshop of the World is on my reading list. Did you read it in hardback, paperback or ebook? I've seen the paperback, and the print is small, but the hardback is quite expensive...

I'd also echo The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King - an excellent narrative history of the twilight of manuscript printing in Renaissance Florence.

I've posted a few posts recently about history books about books / manuscripts. Some recent examples include The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club by de Hamel, and The Lost Gutenberg by Margaret Leslie Davis

Have you read The Last Duel by Eric Jager? It's the book on which the film was based. I preferred the book, as it provides more context than the film.

Asbridge's biography of Marshall is excellent - it was reading that earlier this year that persuaded me to finally give The Crusades a go.

And yes, the lack of dramatic portrayal of the crusades is interesting to note. Perhaps the depiction of a Them and Us narrative is too problematic these days, even if the actual truth is more nuanced. I think that instead of a movie, a multi season depiction of Outremer would be fascinating.

I finished two hefty books this week:

The first was Thomas Asbridge's The Crusades. It's an excellent overview of the Crusades, with perspectives from both sides. Perhaps understandably, it focuses in on the Third Crusade as the centrepiece of the narrative, tracking the endeavours of Saladin and the Lionheart closely. It perhaps rushes the later Crusades a bit, but that might have been a necessary editorial step to stop the book becoming too daunting. I've got Dan Jones' book on the Crusades in my to-be-read pile, and I've also got Roger Crowley's Accursed Tower (specifically on the siege of Acre) on my radar too. Someone here mentioned The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, which I might try to pick up too.

The second book I finished this week was The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscript Club by Christopher de Hamel. Not quite narrative history, it tells the story of 12 medieaval manuscript collectors over time, starting with St Anselm, and tracking through to the 20th Century. It's very much a follow-up volume to his excellent Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts. The author is an expert in his field, and has some firsthand experience of some of the manuscripts discussed. He imagines meeting each of the twelve collectors, which could sound affecting, but is actually endearing. Thoroughly recommended. The hardback volume of Posthumous Papers is sumptuously illustrated with medieval manuscripts (word of advice: the hardback of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts was also beautifully illustrated, but when it was published in paperback, they apparently dropped most of the colour illustrations. The same might happen to Posthumous Papers...)

The Anarchy period is covered off in a recent narrative history, The White Ship by Charles Spencer, which deals with the drowning of the Prince Regent in 1120.

You might like The Last Duel by Eric Jager. It's not quite courtly intrigue but more chivalric politics. Its quite zoomed in to a particular event and the consequences thereof.

It was recently turner into a film by Rodley Scott. I prefer the book, especially if you get to read it without knowing what happens in the end.

About every three years, I go on a book diet - I'm not allowed to buy any books for an entire year. There are a couple of waivers: books as presents for others, books needed for my professional career, and books for my very infrequent book group.

It's been quite cathartic, though I freely admit frustrating too. I definitely found myself getting through my existing pile. And I used the local library a lot more too.

I've done it three times so far. I'm thinking I might do it again next year...

Tom Standage recently wrote a book called A Brief History of Motion. This covers, broadly, our attempte to travel fast on wheels, ranging from the earliest carts and chariots through to self driving vehicles. It has a particular focus on cars, and in particular, the social aspects of automobiles. Highly recommended.

Being honest, Standage is an excellent writer of narratives on the social history of technology. I recommend all that he's written.

The BBC History Extra podcast just did an eight part series on the end of Roman Britain, which sounds like it might be up your street...

I've just finished a slightly different history book - *Making History, The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past * by Richard Cohen. Its tells the story of historians from Herodotus and Thucydides through to modern television documentary makers. It's a big book (660 pages before the footnotes), and a big sweep of time.

I think it generally works well. It covers the obvious historians (Gibbon, Suetonius), the obvious in hindsight (Shakespeare, Trotsky, Churchill) plus a range of voices that have been underrepresented. There are some great chapters on fiction as history, Marxist historians, Machiavelli and black historians.

Its a narrative read rather than a book on histiography, but it's all the more readable for it. I'd recommend it.

Pigeons did actually contribute to the Allied war effort. There is a recent book called *Secret Pigeon Service * by Gordon Corera which is about the use of carrier pigeons to smuggle messages from the French Resistance.