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Bibliography for History Reading Challenge Dear Student, During your time at university you have a fantastic opportunity to engage with a whole range of ideas, concepts and perspectives. Many of these will challenge you; others will inspire you; some you may reject entirely, but in all cases they will broaden your understanding and perspective. We in the History Depart- ment are keen to encourage you in this and so we have put together a bibliography of works that have shaped our lives and informed our views. We don’t necessarily agree with all the ideas contained in these works–sometimes exactly the opposite-, but we hope that you, like us, will find them stimulating.

Exciting ideas come in many forms and for the purpose of this exercise we have chosen to challenge you to read 20 books and watch 6 films from the list shown below. If you have already read/watched any of the works then they cannot be counted towards your total. You will notice that the list of books shown below is broken up into categories and at least 2 works must be read from each section in order to complete the challenge. There is no specific section for either poetry or plays; instead these are interspersed among all areas. Likewise, there is some overlap between different sections because the author’s lifetime spanned two different centuries. All of the works shown here are available in different editions, so no publication data has been provided; they are available either on campus or are purchasable very cheaply online (some of the books from the ‘Outstanding works of world history’ may be a little more expensive). If you use an e-reader (such as a Kindle or a Sony Ebook Reader) or have the Kindle reading app on your PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android Phone, then some of the books may be downloaded as e-books for no cost or, in some cases, for a cost which is lower than that for a paperback or hardback copy.

This challenge must be completed before the end of your undergraduate degree. When you have read/ watched the required number of books and films, please contact us and we will arrange an informal meeting just to make sure that you have completed the challenge correctly. Successful candidates will receive a certificate and a small prize.

Regards, The History Department

Tips for getting started!

We realise that there are so many different books listed here that it can be difficult to know where to start! You might find any of these helpful:

l We have indicated some of the works that have really influenced us over the years so why not have a go at some of these? l Get your friends involved; ask them which books they have read recently and what they thought of them, you could even form a reading group. l If you start reading a book and find that you are not enjoying it then don’t force yourself to reach the end. Different books suit different tastes and there is nothing more dispiriting than reading something you are not interested in! l This bibliography represents a small sample of the many thousands of works that we could have included. If there is a particular work that you really want to read then contact us and we can discuss its inclusion in your challenge.

1 Section 1: 20th Century Literature

Individual Works

l Angelou, Maya, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings A heartrending but ultimately uplifting auto-biography of a young black woman’s life under Jim Crow.

l Barker, Pat, The Ghost Road l Barnes, J., Arthur and George l Camus, Albert, The Stranger or The Fall

Neville Stankley recommends How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (1936) This is the grand-daddy of all business and self improvement books that later works have sought to emulate but never bettered. Its very accessible and full of lovely examples from the period including the likes of Al Capone, Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge. It was designed to help people and businesses be more confident in post depression era USA but ended up creating one of the ‘most significant movements in adult education’. Guess what – being nice to people is a good thing.

l Cather, Willa, Oh Pioneers! l Cocteau, Jean, Les Enfants Terribles l Du Maurier, Daphne, Rebecca l Faulkner, William, As I Lay Dying l Faulks, Sebastian, Birdsong l García Márquez, Gabriel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, or Chronicle of a Death Foretold l Gibbon, Stella, Cold Comfort Farm l Golding, William, The Lord of the Flies l Grahame, Kenneth, Tales of the Riverbank l Heller, Joseph, Catch 22

Bill Niven recommends The Castle by F. Kafka A nightmarish exploration of the horrors of modern bureaucracy, a bitter commentary on the disorientation of modern man.

l Lee, Harper, To kill a Mockingbird l Loos, Anita, Gentlemen prefer Blondes l Mantel, Hilary, Wolfe Hall l McEwan, Ian, Atonement l Miller, Henry, The Tropic of Cancer Franz Kafka monument by the l Nabokov, Vladimir, Lolita sculptor Jaroslav Rons, next to the Spanish synagogue, l Pasternak, Boris, Dr Zhivago in Prague. l Paz, Octavio, The Labyrinth of Solitude l Peake, Mervyn, Gormenghast

2 l Peake, Mervyn, Gormenghast l Remarque, Ernest Maria, All Quiet on the Western Front l Rand, A, The Fountainhead l Saint-Expury, Antoine, Wind, Sand and Stars

John McCallum recommends The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson A minister who doesn’t believe in God falls down a well and encounters the devil. The basic premise of James Robertson’s novel is easily summarised, but this book in fact offers a rich web of intriguing plotlines, small-town politics, and the story, in his own words, of a man’s gradual breakdown into crisis. As well as touching on the universal theme of belief and unbelief, the novel particularly appeals to me for its evocative sense of the on-going presence of Calvinist religion in modern Scotland. Indeed, the nearest comparison to the book can be found not among Robertson’s contemporary novelists, but in a much earlier classic exploration of the anguish of the tortured soul, James Hogg’s Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), also well worth a read.

John also recommends Stewart Lee’s, How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-up Comedian If my first recommendation has some resonance with my main historical research interest, my second is entirely concerned with my main interest outside academia: live comedy (as a connoisseur, not a performer!). Not many have been able to write convincingly about such an elusive theme as humour, but Stewart Lee is a master of the craft, and this autobiographical work helps us to understand his techniques, what makes a joke funny, and the thinking behind some of his most successful routines. It is also very funny. And returning to the subject of academia, through the annotated transcriptions of his live performances Lee demonstrates that even the driest of scholarly tools, the footnote, can be used to hilarious effect.

l Salinger, J.D., Catcher in the Rye

Stuart Burch recommends, Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg, first published in English under the same title in 1963 and again in 2002 with a foreword by Margaret Atwood. Stuart also recommends "perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful, book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor"... Douglas Adams’, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The two-faced Whirlpool Galaxy, NASA image release January 13, 2011.

l Spark, Muriel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Nic Morton recommends J. R. R. Tolkein’s, Arguably the most exciting and inspiring fiction book I have ever read is Lord of the Rings. For those of you who haven’t read it already, or at least seen the film, it is the classic tale of the battle of good and evil set in a world populated by elves, dwarves, trolls and orks. I read it (or to be more precise I listen to an unabridged recording of it in the car) at least once a year and now I do so as much for the quality of the language and Tolkein’s underlying philosophy as for the brilliantly-conceived plot.

l Wharton, Edith, Age of Innocence

3 Key Authors Alternatively, why not try any work written by these authors:

Nick Hayes recommends “the first ‘adult’ [and not in the sense that it’s used today] book I ever read was Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles a set text in my first year at senior school. We were supposed to read a couple of chapters per week but I was so completely hooked that I finished it over the weekend. Nick’s other recommendations: “I still read Doyle today – and indeed also really enjoyed Julian Barnes’s parody, Arthur and George. I tend to read now in batches, so I’ll devour Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle the works of one author, then - locus like - move on to another. Recently Hillary Mantel (Wolfe Hall et al) has been a favourite, but also C.J. Sansom (Revelation). My most disappointing book ever was Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; the BBC TV version staring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth was just so much better.”

l Bernard-Shaw, George ( e.g. Pygmalion) l Bowen, Elizabeth (e.g. The House in ) l Bryson, Bill (e.g. Notes from a Small Country) l Buchan, John (e.g. Thirty Nine Steps)

Gary Moses recommends Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s disturbing and absorbing novella on the nature and consequences of European imperialism in Africa.

Joseph Conrad l Dick, Philip K. (e.g. The Man in the High Castle)

Umberto Eco For example, The Name of the Rose; Baudolino or Kevin Gould’s choice, Foucault’s Pendulum in which Eco explores the darker side of Paris, charging his characters to uncover hidden manuscripts, explain mystical symbols, expose plots and murders, and discover truth. Eco’s craft and use of language are a delight to behold, and of course you can re-trace the steps taken by the book’sprotagonists by visiting Foucault's actual Pendulum which dominates the magnificent Panthéon in Paris.

l Forester, C.S (e.g. Mr Midshipman Hornblower) l Galsworthy, John (e.g. The Forsythe Saga) l Graves, Robert (e.g. I Claudius) l Greene, Grahame (e.g. Brighton Rock) l Hardy, Thomas (e.g. Far from the Madding Crowd) l Hemmingway, Ernest (e.g. For whom the Bell Tolls) l Joyce, James (e.g. A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man) l , Jack (e.g. Call of the Wild) l Le Carre, John (e.g. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)

4 Thomas Mann – Any work Bill Niven recommends Magic Mountain. It perfectly captures the atmosphere of imperial decay so characteristic of pre-World War One Europe. It is long and languid, in places, but it takes its time because it wishes to suggest this was a slow, almost ele- gant decline; indeed it has much in common with Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, which evokes a similar atmosphere in post-WW1 England.

l Masters, John (e.g. Nightrunners of Bengal; Bhowani Junction) l Montserrat, Nicholas (e.g. The Cruel Sea) l Moravia, Alberto (e.g. The Conformist) l O’ Brien, Patrick (e.g. The Yellow Admiral)

George Orwell- Any work Amy Fuller recommends Nineteen Eighty-four There are not many books that I can say have had a profound effect on me, nor ones for which (like any significant or defining moment) I can remember exactly where I was at the time, but this is certainly one. When I finished reading it, all I could do for the rest of the day was to wander around in a state of shock. It is the most chilling novel that I have ever read: a profound and terrifying vision of the future. Orwell wrote it in 1949, and thirty-five years later the dystopian predictions of this brilliantly crafted masterpiece had yet to be realised. But now, as CCTV and various other types of surveillance become more and more prevalent in our society, the blurring between fact and fiction is becoming frighteningly more apparent. After all, Big Brother is watching!

l Plath, Sylvia (e.g. The Bell Jar) l Proust, Marcel (e.g. A La Recherche du Temps Perdu/In Search of Lost Time) l Sansom, C.J. (e.g. Revelation). l Scott, Paul, (e.g. the Raj quartet, Staying On) l Shaw, George Bernard (e.g. Pygmalion) l Sholokov, Mikhail (e.g. Virgin Soil Upturned)

Alan Sillitoe- Any work Gary Moses: “Very different [from Gary’s other recommendations], but equally brilliant in my view, is Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe, a slice of working-class social realism set in Nottingham and based around the contradictory ‘rebel without a cause’ Arthur Seaton – it also inspired a great film directed by Karel Reisz and an album by the Arctic Monkeys.”

l Steinbeck, John (e.g. Of Mice and Men) l Waugh, E. (e.g. Brideshead revisited) l Wells, H. G., (e.g. War of the Worlds) l Woolf, Virginia (e.g. Mrs Dalloway)

5 Section 2: Political Philosophy and spirituality (very broadly defined)

Individual Works We would particularly like to invite any suggestions for additions to this section. A number of major works for the world’s religions have been included here but any other important text for any other religion can be considered included here.

l Armstrong, Karen, Buddha l Bible – King James Version l Book of Common Prayer -1662 version l Bunyan, John, Pilgrim’s Progress (Judith Rowbotham recommends) l Clausewitz, Carl von On War l Confucius, Lun Yu (Analects) or Ta Hsueh (Great Learning) l Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species l Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique l Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan l Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason l Montaigne, Michel de, Essays l More, Sir Thomas, Utopia l Musashi, Miyamoto, Book of Five Rings l Paley, William, Principles of Moral and Physical Philosophy and/or Natural Theology l Pirsig, Robert, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance l The Quran l Russell, Betrand, History of Western Philosophy l Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations l The Torah

White, A., The Vicar of Baghdad: Fighting for Peace in the Middle East Nicholas Morton: “Recently I have read a number of eyewitness accounts about the situation in modern-day Iraq, but none have inspired me as much as The Vicar of Baghdad: fighting for peace in the Middle East. This is an account by a Church of England vicar, who has been working with top-level politicians from all sides to secure peace in Iraq. It shed an entirely new light on my understanding of the problems faced in that region and the efforts made to resolve them.“

l Williams, John Tyerman, Pooh and the Philosophers l Zedong, Mao, Thoughts of Chairman Mao

Key Authors

l Aristotle (e.g. Politics) l St Augustine (e.g. City of God or Confessions) l Beauvoir, Simone de (e.g. The Second Sex) l Bentham, Jeremy (e.g. A Fragment on Government) l Camus, Albert (e.g. the Outsider) l Descartes, Rene (e.g. Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings) l Diderot, Denis (e.g. Rameau’s Nephew) l Foucault, Michel (e.g. Discipline and Punish) l Greer, Germaine (e.g. The Female Eunuch) l Hume, David (e.g. A treatise of Human Nature) l Lewis, C. S. (e.g. Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters etc.)

6 Niccolo Machiavelli - Any work, but particularly The Prince & Discourses Martyn Bennett recommends The Discourses (Penguin Classics). This text is particularly useful. It offers what was then a modern critique and is a great book to read alongside The Prince.

l Locke, John (any major work, try Two Treatises on Government, or, On Human Understanding) l Marx, Karl (Try The Communist Manifesto) l Mill, John Stuart (e.g. On Liberty, The Principles of Political Economy) l Nietzsche, Frederick (e.g. Thus Spake Zarathustra) l Plato (e.g. The Republic) l Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (Possibly The Social Contract) l Voltaire (Candide is a good starting point)

Section 3: Non-European/American literature

We would particularly like to invite any suggestions for additions to this section. Some of these titles can be a little more difficult to find, but they are not impossible – many are online!

Individual Works

l 1001 Nights (Arabian Nights) l Achebe, Chinua, Things Fall Apart l Akutagawa, Ryunosuke, l Allende, Isabel, House of Spirits l Bhagavadgita l Chaudhuri, Amit, Afternoon Raag l Ch’eng-en, Wu, Monkey l Confucius, Analects l Davidar, David, House of Blue Mangoes l Franklin, Miles, My Brilliant Career l Ghandi, Mohandas, Autobiography

Khaled Hosseini Have you ever wondered what life was like under the Taliban? Try reading Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.

l Isegawa, Moses, Abyssinian Chronicles l Khayyam, Omar, Rubaiyyat (any translation) l Keneally, Thomas, Schindlers Ark l La Guma, Alex, A Walk in the Night l Mafhouz, Naguib, Cairo trilogy l Mofolo, Thomas, Chaka l Okri, Ben, The Famished Road l Paton, Alan, Cry the Beloved Country l Patterson, Banjo, any collection of his poems (which include ‘Waltzing Matilda’) l Ramayana of Valmiki l Roy, Arundhati, The God of Small Things l Rushdie, Salman, Midnight’s Children l Saraf, Sujit, The Confession of Sultana Daku l Saro-Wiwa, Kenule, Sozaboy or Basi and Company l Seth, Vikram, A Suitable Boy

7 l Sei Shonagan, Pillow Book l Shikibu, Murasaki, Tales of Genji l Soseki, Nosemi, Kokoro l The Water Margin (Shui Hu Chuan) l Tharoor, Sashi, The Great Indian Novel l Tzu, Lao, Tao te Ching l Wole Solinka, Ake, The Years of Childhood Key Authors

l Desai, Anita, any novel (e.g. Cry the Peacock) l Coetzee, J.M., any work (e.g. Disgrace) l Harris, Wilson, any novel, such as one his Guyana quartet (e.g. Palace of the Peacock) l Marquez, Gabriel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, or, Love in the Time of Cholera l Naipaul, V S, any work (e.g. The Mystic Masseur) l Narayan, R.K, any work (e.g. The Financial Expert) l Tagore, Rabindranath, any novel or collection (e.g. The Home and the World, Relationships) (Jogajog) l Walcott, Derek, any collection of his poetry or a play (e.g. Ti-Jean and His Brothers)

Section 4: 16th-19th Century Literature

l Alcott, L. M., Little Women l Ballantyne, R.M. Coral Island l Beecher Stowe, Harriet, Uncle Tom’s Cabin l Blackmore, R.D., Lorna Doone l Carroll, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland, Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass l Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, Don Quixote l Cooper, James Fennimore, The Last of the Mohicans

Alexandre Dumas - The Three Musketeers Dumas certainly takes liberties with historical fact, but the pace, fun and action-driven narrative gives this historical romance its broad appeal.

l Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary l Grass, Gunter, Tin Drum l Grosssmith, George, Diary of a Nobody l Hawthorne, Nathanial, Scarlet Letter l Hughes, Thomas, Tom Brown’s Schooldays l Hugo, Victor, Les Miserables l Kingsley, Charles, The Water Babies l Lampedusa, Giuseppe, The Leopard l Marryat, Captain Frederick, The Children of the New Forest

Neville Stankley recommends Herman Melville’s Moby Dick Having read a bowdlerised children’s version as a pre-teenager obsessed with sailing ships rather than whales, I loved the book. I then read the grown up version at university (having partly chosen my history course for its nautical content – something NTU sadly lacks) it was so much more. I related to the main character’s lack of confidence as the outsider who struggles to find himself and his place in the world (you can truly ‘call me Ishmael’). Also any book that espouses the idea that ‘hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling’ is speaking my language. Later in life I was to discover that a number of my managers had many of the leadership qualities of Captain Ahab. Thus my two suggestions make interesting companion pieces.

l Orczy, Baroness Eummuska, The Scarlet Pimpernel

8 Thomas Paine - Try Common Sense, as recommended by Martyn Bennett: A wonderful encapsulation of the disparate ideas behind the protests against British rule and a powerful critique of 'representative democracy'. It created the ideology of the American Revolution, but may and I say may have engendered the 'everything that it British is bad and everything that isn't is good’ attitude to political and legal structures which lies behind some of the flaws in American political structures. Paine did not mean this to be so. So much achieved in so short a text - human brilliance at its best.

Library Congress, Prints l and Photographs Division, Ransome, Arthur, Swallows and Amazons Carl Van Vechten Collection, l Sewell, Anna, Black Beauty LC-USZ62-42522 DLC. l Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein l Smiles, Samuel, Self Help l Stoker, Bram, Dracula l Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver’s Travel l Turgenev, Ivan, Virgin Soil

Martyn Bennett recommends The True Levellers' Standard Advanced 1649 (online) by Gerard Winstanley This text is a core document for radical interpretations of the will of God and its relationship with the mid seventeenth century revolution. The Levellers'... suggests taking the consequences of the overthrow of monarchy to the 'natural' conclusion of overthrowing the pillars of the regime - landholders, nobility and property and returning the earth to being a common treasury as God intended. From each according to their effort (sweat of their faces) to each according to their needs. This text has been prominent amongst environmental groups - the road protests of the 'nineties and it may well become so again in opposition to government environment plans.

l Wordsworth, William and Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Lyrical Ballads l Wyss, Johann, The Swiss Family Robinson l Zola, Emile, J’Accuse, Germinal, L'Assommoir

Key Authors

Judith Rowbotham recommends Jane Austen - Mansfield Park – the least liked, on the whole, of her canon – but to me the most fascinating and enjoyable of her works. I enjoy Fanny Price, her apparently Jane Austen meek heroine who in fact has a will of steel behind her meekness – she knows what is right and what is wrong and will not compromise…. I find the nuances and interplay fascinating. You have the very good Fanny and Edmund – you have the promising Mary and Henry Crawford, who – out of the best of their natures – fall for Edmund and Fanny respectively. But Jane Austen indicates that the actual ending of her novel, with Edmund marrying Fanny, would not have happened had Henry behaved as well as he had the potential to do… he lost Fanny not because she loved Edmund but because he behaved badly. The nuances of expectations of appropriate behaviour according to class, gender, age stereotypes are displayed as being, here, in transition. You can learn indirectly about the impact on the West Indies of the ending of the slave trade – of the state of drama on the London stage – of agriculture – of landscapes and architecture… A wonderfully absorbing read that I return to every few years and find something more to it, every time…

9 Any work by The Bronte family: Emily, Charlotte, Anne Gary Moses: “The most stimulating novel I have read is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte a vivid and powerful exploration of love, passion and revenge – it also has a farm servant in it.”

l Lord Byron (e.g. Don Juan) l Balzac, Honore (e.g. Cousin Bette) l Burnett, Frances Hodgson (e.g. Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Secret Garden) The Bronte sisters l Burney, Fanny (e.g. Evelina) l Burns, Robert (any edition of his poetry) l Checkhov, Anton (e.g. Three Sisters) l Chesterton, G.K. (e.g. Father Brown, collection of poetry) l Collins, Wilkie (e.g. The Moonstone) l Dickens, Charles (e.g. Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, or Hard Times) l Defoe, Daniel (e.g. Robinson Crusoe) l Donne, John (any collection of his poetry) l Dostoevsky, Fyodor (e.g. Brothers Karamatzov) l Eliot, George ( Ian Inkster recommends Middlemarch) l Fielding, Henry (e.g. Tom Jones) l Gaskell, Elizabeth (e.g. Wives and Daughters, North and South) l Haggard, Sir Henry Rider (e.g. King Solomons Mines, Nada the Lily) l Ibsen, Henrik (e.g. The Dolls House, Peer Gynt) l James, Henry (e.g. Portrait of a Lady) l Kipling, Rudyard (e.g. The Jungle Book, Kim) l Lope de Vega, Felix (any play or collection of poetry, e.g. The Dancing Master) l Louis- Stevenson, Robert (e.g. Kidnapped or The Strange Case of Dr Jeckell and Mr Hyde) l Marlowe, Christopher (e.g. Dr Faustus, Tamerlaine) l McDonald, George (e.g. Back of the North Wind) l Milton, John (e.g. Paradise Lost, The Complete Poems) l Pope, Alexander (e.g. Essay on Man) l Richardson, Samuel (e.g. Pamela) l Scott, Sir Walter (e.g. Rob Roy, Ivanhoe) l Shakespeare, William (e.g. Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet) l Sheridan, Richard (e.g. The Rivals) l Thackeray, William (e.g. Vanity Fair, The Newcomes

Martyn Bennett recommends War and Peace Leo Tolstoy A fantastic exploration of people and society in a time of momentous change. This is a novel based on a great deal of historical research although its arguments about people and fate are now (and even then) dated the book does try to look at individuals and their roles, reactions and resistance to the 'tide of history'. It is a book which helped frame a good deal of soviet historians’ interpretations of this early great patriotic war by creating Kutuzov as a popular figure in opposition to the Tsar who is in the book quite a minor character and too close to the nature of French imperialism to be a hero of the people. The soviets also picked up on the notion of the Russians as a 'people' resisting and defeating Napoleon with their own weather system in support. As a result it is often blurred into a historical perspective that is in itself being questioned and overwritten science Glasnost. In the terms of it being a novel, it remains a great book. Although it is a novel and from the western perspective I grew up with, not confused with History, it did, perhaps subconsciously, influence the way I wrote histories of the civil wars and the early seventeenth century in that I also set a range of individuals from across the social spectrum into the 'great events' of the period and explored their roles, reactions and resistance to them.

10 l Trollope, Anthony (e.g. Barchester Towers, Phineas Finn) l Twain, Mark (e.g. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) l Verne, Jules (e.g. Fifty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea)

Oscar Wilde (e.g. Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Grey) The man who wrote he could resist anything but temptation – and ended up in Reading Gaol….

Section 5: The Philosophy of History and outstanding works of history

Individual Works

l Barthes, Roland, Mythologies l Blainey, Geoffrey, A Short History of the World l Boswell, James, Life of Dr Johnson l Burke, J., Intimate History of Killing l Cannadine, D., Class in Britain l Carlyle, Thomas, The French Revolution l Chien, Ssu-ma, Records of the Historian l Churchill, Winston, A History of the English Speaking Peoples

Colley, L., Britons: forging the Nation, 1707-1837 Who are the British? What is it that makes us so distinctive? This fascinating explores some of the roots of British Identity.

Nick Hayes: Sometimes the lines for me here are blurred, so I remember reading as a teenager Robert Grave’s excellent autobiography on life in the trenches in the First World War, only to find out later that he’s made a lot of it up so that the book would sell. In terms of history books today, the one that I use all the time as a first point is Martin Daunton’s Cambridge Urban History of Britain Volume 3: 1854-1950 In this section Nick Hayes also recommends: Ross McKibbin’s Classes and Cultures in Britain England 1918-1951 (which puts David Cannadine’s Class in Britain to shame). Books that I’ve really enjoyed recently would include Joanna Burke’s Intimate History of Killing and Jim Tomlinson’s Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy.

l Equiano, Olauday, Interesting Narrative l Evans, Richard, In Defence of History l Fletcher, R., The Barbarian Conversion: from paganism to Christianity

11 Martyn Bennett recommends Napoleon's Cursed War by Ronald Fraser Fabulous exploration of real people resisting the tide of Napoleonic conquest and how this was a social political cultural national and sub national phenomena. It leaves last year's Wolfson prize winning Russian Against Napoleon in the dust!

l Fritzche, P., Life and Death in the Third Reich l Fulbrook, Mary, Historical Theory: Ways of Imagining the Past

For this section Judith Rowbotham recommends - The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire The great work of history apart from my second choice, Thucydides, Peloponnesian War! From these two, I learned to appreciate what being a historian really entailed – the need for judgement and above all, for accuracy and honesty (with oneself as well as with one’s subject matter). It is a book which tells you much about Roman and Byzantine history (and it is still used as a source by, for instance, historians of Byzantium today), but it also tells you about Gibbon’s fears for the world in his own century – as such it is one of the towering works of world history. And he tells such wonderful stories too – they carry you along! I go back to it time after time – I have just used it in the paper I am writing at the moment….

l Halbwachs, Maurice, On Collective Memory Edward Gibbon l Hegel, George, The Philosophy of History l Heroditus, Histories l Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan l Hobsbawm Eric, and Ranger, Terence (eds), The Invention of Tradition l Hourani, Albert, A History of the Arab Peoples l Hughes, Robert, The Fatal Shore

Landes, D., The Wealth and Poverty of Nations Have you ever wondered why some countries are rich and others are poor? This outstanding book explains how this came about.

l Jazirat Ibn Umar, Collection of Histories l Jenkins, Keith, Rethinking History l Lawrence, T. E., Seven Pillars of Wisdom l Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Lord, The History of England from the Accession of James II l McKibbin, R., Classes and Cultures in Britain England, 1919-1951 l Montainge, Michel de, Essays l Mumford, Lewis, The City in History l Newton, Isaac, Principia Mathematica l Nora, Pierre, Realms of Memory l Oliver, Roland and Fage, John, A Short History of Africa

12 Kevin Gould : Jaroslav Pelikan’s Whose Bible Is It Anyway? offers a considered exposition of the history of the Bible, placing the text in its historical context and explaining why and how it was formed, how it was changed over centuries, and how it has had such significant impact on cultures and societies over two millennia. This helps to explain many historical forces, such as the power of the Church, Renaissance and Reformation, Evangelism and belief, and therefore serves as an important resource for students of history in many fields.

l Pepys, Samuel, Diaries l Pinchbeck, Ivy, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution l Ibn al Qalanisi, The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades l Robinson, Ronald and Gallagher, John, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism l Schama, Simon, Citizens l Schama, Simon, Landscape and Memory

For this section Bill Niven recommends There are so many good books on Nazism, these days – my area of particular interest – but you should read at least one part of Ian Kershaw’s two-part Hitler biography, or one part of Richard Evans’ three-part history of the Third Reich. Less well-known but no less fascinating, if you want to get a feel for how ordinary folk thought and felt in the Third Reich, is Life and Death in the Third Reich by Peter Fritzche. Then there’s Timothy Snyder’s new, if controversial book Bloodlands, which suggests an almost collaborative equivalence between Nazism and in the “bloodlands”, as he calls them, of the Ukraine, Belarus, eastern Poland and the Baltic States.

l Strachey, Lytton, Eminent Victorians l Thompson, E. P., Making of the English Working Class l Thucydides, Peloponnesian War Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild l Tomlinson, J., Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy 183-S33882 / CC-BY-SA l Toynbee, Arnold, A Study of History l Trotksy, Leon, History of the Russian Revolution l Usama ibn Munquid, Book of Instruction l Weber, M, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism l White, Hayden, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19th Century Europe l White, Hayden, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation l Whitehead, Anne, Memory

Key Authors

l Braudel, Fernand (e.g. A History of Civilisations) l Butterfield, Herbert, The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800, or, George III and the Historians l Davies, Natalie Zemon (e.g. Return of Martin Guerre, Women on the Margins)

13 Gary Moses recommends E.J. Hobsbawm The historian that really inspired me when I still had a reasonable amount of hair was Eric Hobsbawm. He actually wrote an economic history of Britain that is both readable and interesting (Industry and Empire) and his magisterial four volume world history: The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, The Age of Empire and The Age of Extremes are remarkable works of erudite synthesis and engaging writing. I also found Alun Howkin’s Reshaping Rural England quite inspiring. It is a thoughtful piece of social history that shows that the rural aspects of our past are worthy of explorations other than antiquarianism, nostalgia, and the ’ploughs and cows’ of mainstream agricultural history.

l Elton, Geoffrey (e.g. England under the Tudors) l Foucault, Michel (e.g. Discipline and Punish) l Levi-Strauss, Claude, Myth and Meaning (or other works) l Marshall, Peter J. (e.g. East Indian Fortunes. The British in Bengal in the eighteenth century) l Namier, Lewis (e.g. England in the Age of the American Revolution) l Taylor, A. J. P. (e.g. Origins of Second World War) l Xenophon (e.g. Anabasis) Section 6: Classical and Medieval Civilisation

Individual Works

l Abelard, Peter, The Letters of Heloise and Abelard l Anna Comnena, The Alexiad (A wonderful example of the bitchy gossip school of history writing) l Anonymous, Beowulf l The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People l Boccacio, Giovanni, Decameron l Caesar, Julius, The Gallic War: Seven Commentaries on The Gallic War l Erasmus, Desiderius, In Praise of Folly l Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History l John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

Marco Polo, The Travels What did the earlier European adventurers make of the Far East? This incredible account describes an Italian’s impressions of Medieval Asia.

Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire A fantastic book by a brilliant man explaining how the Romans rose to become an imperial power.

l The Kama Sutra l Luis de Camoes, The Lusiads l Malory, Thomas, Le Morte D’Arthur l The Book of Margery Kempe l Ovid, Metamorphoses l Procopius, The Secret History l The Song of Roland (any edition) l Suetonius, The Twelve Ceasars l Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome l Virgil, The Aeneid

14 Key Authors

l Aescylus (any work, e.g. The Oresteia, The Persians) l Aquinas, Thomas (any work or collection of selected works) l Chaucer, Geoffrey (any work, i.e. The Canterbury Tales) l Chretien, Troyes (any compilation of romances) l Christine de Pisan (Book of the Three Virtues, Book of the City of Ladies, or, Treasure of the City of Ladies) l Cicero (e.g. On the Good Life) l Dante (any work, i.e. The Inferno) l Euripides (any work, e.g. The Trojans, The Bacchae) l Homer (any work, i.e. The Iliad, The Odyssey – Judith Rowbotham recommends the Lattimore translations) l Plato (any work, i.e. The Republic) l Seneca (any work, e.g. Letters from a Stoic) l Sophocles (any work, e.g. Oedipus Rex) l Xenophon (any work, e.g. Anabasis)

Section 7: Short Story Collections

Individual Works

l Aesop Fables (any one volume or collection) l Anderson, Hans Christian, Fairy Tales l 10001 Arabian Nights l Bacon, Francis, Essays l Boccaccio, Giovanni, Decameron l Borges, Jorge Luis, Ficciones l Chaucer, Geoffrey, Canterbury Tales l Desai, Anita, Diamond Dust and Other Stories l Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Essays (any series) l Garner, Helen, Honour and Other People’s Children l Gesta Romanorum l Grimm, Brothers, Fairy Tales l Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Tanglewood Tales l Hazlitt, William, Spirit of the Age l Henry, O., any four stories, e.g. The Gift of the Magi l Higuchi, Ichiko, Takekurabe plus at least three other short stories l Irving, Washington, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (contains Rip Van Winkle) l Lawrence, D.H, England, My England l Mansfield, Katherine, The Garden Party l Montaigne, Michel de, Essays (any collection thereof) l Narayan, R.K. A Writer’s Nightmare l Perrault, Charles, Fairy Tales l Updike, John, Tears of My Father

Key Authors

l Addison, Joseph (e.g. The Spectator) l Asimov, Isaac (e.g. The Martian Way) l Carlyle, Thomas (any collection of essays or lectures, e.g. On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History)

15 l Dickens, Charles (at least four short stories, e.g. A Christmas Carol) l Conan Doyle, Arthur (any Sherlock Holmes collection, e.g. The Return of Sherlock Holmes) l Forster, E.M. (e.g. The Life to Come) l Gogol, Nicolai (at least four of his short stories such as Diary of a Madman, The Nose) l Harris, Joel Chandler (Any Brer Rabbit collection, e.g. The Tales of Uncle Remus)

Judith Rowbotham recommends Rudyard Kipling “for me – Kipling is the most enjoyable short story author, much though I appreciate many others. But in his diversity – tragedy, horror, comedy, psychology – Kipling covers all bases…I giggle, still, at ‘The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat’ in A Diversity of Creatures, I LOVE Mrs Hauksbee (like Mrs Bishop Proudie in Barchester Towers, one of my ideal women…), to be found in a number of stories in his collections including Plain Tales from the Hills, I can shiver at the eeriness of the ‘Phantom Rickshaw’ – and his stark insight into schoolboy psychology and anarchy in Stalky and Co is still a breathtaking challenge to political correctness. For sophisticated revenge, try out Stalky and Beetle and co in ‘An Unsavoury Interlude’ or for insights into empire, see ‘The Slaves of the Lamp’, parts I and II… If I go on a long plane journey or away to a conference, I always slip a collection of Kipling in my bag.”

l Leacock, Stephen (any collection, but Nonsense Novels is strongly recommended! Find out about Tancred the Tenspot -quite, quite spoiled….) l Levi, Primo (e.g. The Sixth Day and other stories) Maugham, Somerset (e.g. The Trembling of a Leaf) l Maupassant, Guy de (e.g. Les Soirées de Médan, Mademoiselle Fifi) l Poe, Edgar Allen (at least four short stories e.g. Fall of the House of Usher) l Ruskin, John (e.g. Fors Clavigera) l Saki (H H Monroe) (e.g. Beasts and Super-Beasts) l Swift, Jonathan (e.g. Miscellanies) l Thurber, James (e.g. My Life and Hard Times) l Turgenev, Ivan (e.g. The Diary of a Superfluous Man l Vonnegut, Kurt (e.g. Bogambo Snuff Box)

Wodehouse, P.G. (e.g. Blandings Castle, Uckridge, Very Good, Jeeves) If you want to send up Winneie the Pooh and stories about silly people doing silly things.

16 Section 7: Films The Big Chill (1983) Billy Liar (1963) Birth of a Nation (1915) Gary Moses Black Hawk Down (2001) Films: I love American Blade Runner (1982) movies and subscribe to The Blair Witch Project (1999) the view that the old Bonnie and Clyde (1967) ‘Hollywood machine’ (2002) churned out some The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008) pretty good stuff in its Bhowani Junction (1956) post-war heyday. I Brazil (1985) particularly enjoy the Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Westerns of John Ford, Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Howard Hawkes and Sam Peckinpah and the film (1945) noir movies of the 1940s and 1950s such as Out The Browning Version (1951) of The Past and Kiss Me Deadly. Films about Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) Hollywood’s darker side including Billy Wilder’s (1994) Sunset Boulevard and Robert Altman’s The The Butterfly’s Tongue (1999) Player are also a first-rate mixture of entertain- The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) ment and social insight. The best film Casablanca (1942) I have seen about ‘real’ historical events is Gillo The Cat and the Canary (1927) Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers. The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936, 1968) Le Chateau de Ma Mere (1990) Children of a Lesser God (1986) 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968) Chinatown (1974) A Bout de Souffle (1959) (1988) A Bridge Too Far (1977) (1941) A Man For All Seasons (1966) City of God (2002) A Matter of Life and Death (1946) Coming Home (1978) A Night at the Opera (1936) (1974) Aces High (1936) The Counterfeiters (2007) Adaptation (2002) The Court Jester (1955) The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) Cross of Iron (1977) African Queen (1951) Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) (1950) Dark Star (1974) (1999) Day for Night (1973) All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) All The President's Men (1976) (1978) (1977) The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) Aparajito (1956) The Discreet Charm of Bourgeoisie (1972) (1979) Doctor Zhivago (1965) Apur Sansar (1959) Don't Look Now (1973) (1987) Double Indemnity (1944) Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) Downfall (2004) Badlands (1973) Duck Soup (1933) The Bank Dick (1940) El Cid (1961) (2003) Elephant Man (1980) (1975) Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) The Battle of Algiers (1966) E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) (1969) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Battle of the Somme (1916) Être et Avoir (2002) Battleship Potemkin (1925) The Exorcist (1973) Belleville Rendez-Vous (2003) The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) Ben Hur (1925, 1959) Fantasia (1940) The Best Years of our Lives (1946) Fargo (1996) The (1948) (1982) Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) Funny Games (1997) Frankenstein (1931)

17 Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) Nick Hayes: King Kong (1933) I love old British movies, so films like the Ghost King Solomon’s Mines (1950) Train and The Thirty-Nine Steps I’ve just seen (1995) so many times. I grew up watching British war Lawrence of Arabia (1962) films from the 1940s and 1950s – these being standard TV fare during through the sixties, so (1997) all offer a strong nostalgic twinge for me. My all time favourites would include from the 1960s Amy Fuller: Zulu, from the 1970s Cabaret, from the 1980s This is one of my favourite films of all time. Alien, 1990s Independence Day, and from the It’s a bittersweet tale about love and laughing Master and Commander. Best recent in the face of adversity. The film’s protagonist, film would be The Reader; worst by far was Guido (played by the brilliant , Broke Back Mountain (over two hours of tedium who won an Oscar for his portrayal, and also where nothing happens – although my wife directed and co-wrote the film based on his thought differently). father’s own experiences of the Second World War) is a loveable clown who can make a joke out of any situation, no matter how grave. The Freaks (1932) movie is set in Nazi occupied Italy, and is a tragic- The General (1926) comedy about how far a father will go to protect Genevieve (1953) his son, and the risks a husband will take for his Ghandi (1982) ‘principessa’. La Gloire de Mon Pere (1990) Glory (1989) The Godfather (1972) (2006) The Godfather Part 2 (1974) The Loneliess of the Long Distance Runner (1962) Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) The Longest Day (1962) The Gold Rush (1925) Love and Death (1975) Gone with the Wind (1939) Love on the Dole (1941) Goodbye Lenin (2003) M.A.S.H. (1970) (1990) Man on Wire (2008) Gosford Park (2001) Men, Women, A User's Manual (1996) (1937) Manhattan (1979) The Grapes of Wrath (1940) Manon des Sources (1986) Gregory's Girl (1980) Mean streets (1973) Gunga Din (1939) Metropolis (1927) The Hairdresser's Husband (1990) Michael Collins (1996) Halloween (1978) Modern Times (1936) Hellzapoppin' (1941) Mother India (1957) The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) Hidden (2005) Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) (1952) Mrs Miniver (1942) His Girl Friday (1940) Mystery Train (1989) How the West Was Won (1962) Napoleon (1927) I'm All Right Jack (1959) The New World (2005) If (1968) Night of the Living Dead (1968) The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) Night on Earth (1991) In the Heat of the Night (1967) Ninotchka (1939) In Which We Serve (1942) North by Northwest (1959) Intolerance (1916) Nosferatu (1922) It Came from Outer Space (1953) October 1917 Ten Days That Shook The World (1928) It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Of Gods and Men (2010) Jaws (1975) Oh! Mr Porter (1937) The Jazz Singer (1927) Oh! What A Lovely War (1969) (1975) Olympia (1930) Jesus of (1989) Omega Man (1971) Les Jeux Interdits (1952) (1954) Jules et Jim (1962) Orpheus (1949) (1980) Pan's Labyrinth (2006) Kes (1969)

18 The Parallax View (1974) (1949) (1955) Thirteen Days (2000) Paths of Glory (1957) The Thirty Nine Steps (1935) Persepolis (2007) This Sporting Life (1963) Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) Three Colours: Blue, White, Red (1993, 1994, 1994) Private's Progress (1956) (2009) The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953) (1952) Quo Vadis (1951) Judith Rowbotham: I do so love The Titfield Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) Thunderbolt (1953) – one of the classic Ealing Ran (1985) comedies but rather less known than, say, Passport Rashomon (1951) to Pimlico. What’s not to love about it? There are The Reader (2008) trains (and Bishops stoking them! Quite right and Red River (1948) proper…), there are proper villains who look like Red Shoes (1948) villains of a properly British type (sneaky, you La Regle du Jeu (1939) know…). Its anarchic in the best sense of the The Remains of the Day (1993) word and duly subversive of progress! And its Ridicule (1996) short enough not to be boring… Try it! Rififi (1955) Robin Hood (1922, 1991) Sanders of the River (1935) Tokyo Story (1953) Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) Top Hat (1935) (1998) To Be Or Not To Be (1942) Scarface (1932, 1983) Triumph of the Will (1935) Schindler's List (1993) Trust (1990) Schtonk! (1992) (2005) The Searchers (1956) Twelve Angry Men (1957) Secrets and Lies (1996) Unforgiven (1992) The Seven Samurai (1954) Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) The Seventh Seal (1957) Les Visiteurs (1993) Shadowlands (1993) La Voyage Dans La Lune (1902) Shakespeare in Love (1998) Walkabout (1971) Shoah (1985) Waterloo (1970) Sholay (1975) Way Out West (1937) Silence of the Lambs (1991) West Side Story (1961) Silent Running (1972) Where Eagles Dare (1968) Singin' in the Rain (1952) Whisky Galore (1948) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) Whistle Down the Wind (1961) Some Like It Hot (1959) White Heat (1949) (1969) (2009) Sound of Music (1965) The Wild Bunch (1969) Soylent Green (1973) Wild Strawberries (1957) Spartacus (1960) The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006) Spirited Away (2001) Z (1968) Stagecoach (1939) Star Wars (1977) (1954) Sullivan's Travels (1941) Sunset Boulevard (1950) The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) There Will Be Blood (2007) The Thief of Baghdad (1940) The Thin Red Line (1998) Things To Come (1936)

19 uncover discover