Nigel Cawthorne

Fascinating. This exhaustive account was written by an Englishman, in more detail that I usually find on this topic.

The book begins, as might be expected, with "Hal the Horny" - Henry VIII. His wild adventures and the sad and pathetic ending are traced in sprightly prose and a sense of humanity. From there we follow the peccadilloes of his children, his grandchildren, the early Georges (of Hanover), Victoria and her strange ideas about sex, the later Georges, the Duke of Windsor and his very show more strange history, and so through to the present generation of princes (and Princess Anne) and their mis-steps.

Particularly in the case of the more recent rulers, the information explores areas of the Windsors' sexual predilections than I did not expect. I now truly know more about the Duke of Windsor than I ever really wanted to know! The book was written after the divorce of Charles and Diana, but before her death, so the references to Charles, Diana, Camilla, "Squiggy" et.al. are a bit veiled. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Earl of Mountbatten, Prince Phillip, Princess Margaret, Prince Charles, Diana, Andrew and Sarah, and several more minor characters all come under irreverent scrutiny. The only ruler who escapes is Queen Elizabeth (the Second, that is).

A guilty pleasure, that I really did enjoy. Recommended. show less

Very interesting table-top book aiming at providing short information on military formations from ancient to modern times. Each unit is presented on 4 pages with illustrations, important dates and details from lives of some of the important characters from these units.

While descriptions of units up to modern times are good for modern times they seem ... rushed and little bit over simplified.

Also literal translation of Waffen-SS (Weapon-SS (?)) was little bit off-putting. On the good side show more author gave a correct picture of this notorious formation.

But all in all solid 3.5 stars - for people interested in military units they will find little new things (maybe in some old units from premodern-times) but for new readers (and as an index of sorts) it is good book.

Since 3.5 is not possible I rounded it to 4 because book is rare one on this subject and with this format. show less

Most American people, especially the young, now seem to think of classical composers as somehow stodgy and boring—or super-human—not knowing of course that Franz Liszt was kind of the Mick Jagger of his generation, or that Franz Schubert died of syphilis; or really anything about Clara Schumann (who also makes an appearance in this book, although poor Fanny Mendelssohn, at least equally talented, does not). This is a spicy little book that's nice to read in chunks because it has shortish show more chapters, each devoted to a well-known composer of the European classical through romantic periods. You may never listen to some of them in quite the same way again.

I don't recommend this book be placed on the coffee table in your drawing room for casual perusal by your piano pupils while waiting for their lessons to begin.

If this were a true confession instead of a supposed "review", I would admit that much of this book was read to me during a long automobile road trip with a special friend. And then parts of it I read to her in return, when neither of us were driving. It thus merits a special place on my shelf, currently residing between The Twelve Dancing Princesses and The Elizabethan Underworld. show less

This pretty much delivered what I expected—a light, entertaining, fast read, a lot of historical medical trivia, a few jokes, a fun read if you like the darker, weirder, grosser parts of the past. There are lots of bite-sized chunks of info loosely grouped around topic like “internal medicine” and “quack doctors”, with scattered illustrations drawn from medical texts (mostly of medical instruments and doctors at work). He brings up stuff like alchemy and sympathetic healing, shows show more somewhat the progression of things like medical licensing, even brings up some noteworthy figures (if you’re into this stuff) like Robert Liston and Mary Toft.

However, if you’re looking for a book aimed at serious history people or academics, this isn’t it. Cawthorne might have done a lot of research to come up with all the medieval and early modern texts, and all the folk healing and medical pamphlets, and everything else that he’s drawing from—but in most cases, he doesn’t cite his sources. Did he get that fact from a newspaper? An old book? Someone else’s modern academic collection of medical history? Where would I read that ad, if I wanted to look for it?

In a similar vein, he often bounces around in history, putting a medieval cure after one from the 1600s and following it with something that’s probably from the 1700s but he doesn’t say. And I would have appreciated having more explanations of whether a given cure might have worked, what active ingredients there were, that sort of thing. More context, basically, not just lists of ingredients or advertisement. I like knowing why.

But like I said, I didn’t really go in expecting that, it would’ve just been icing on the cake. There’s a lot of information, told understandably, and Cawthorne’s method of mainly quoting text and relating incidents helps to convey patterns in a way that simply explaining them wouldn’t—common ingredients, common types of treatments, even the way people wrote addresses before maps and mass literacy. He’s made the history engaging too, or at least brought it to life somewhat as a “weird medicine highlights reel”—and it’s certainly made me relieved to be living now, when I don’t have to worry about dying from arsenic pills.

It was enjoyable, I learned a bit, I didn’t get all the jokes on account of not being British, and I think there might even be some facts that I can put into use in fiction at some point. Would recommend, even though it wasn’t quite as good as it could have been.

To bear in mind: May contain medical treatments and ailments not suitable for all viewers (but not that many).

6.8/10 show less