She wasn’t burned, likely because she confessed and recanted; except for than the big names like Archbishop Cranmer, the Marian regime largely only burned people who wouldn’t recant their heresies

Does anybody have any recommendations for Canadian political history (or Australian, for that matter)? Civilisation VI has introduced me to Wilfrid Laurier and I’d like to know more about the country and that whole era generally, but in the UK Canadian history is totally absent from any mainstream bookshops.

Similarly, does anyone know any good political histories for late c19th European countries, esp. France Germany and Italy? I’m talking about proper high politics, prime ministers and elections etc

One good trick for Christies is that she loves to have simple motives at the end of the day; a husband wants his wife out his way so he can remarry, a simple trick to come into some money. Often a character will be suspicious since they obviously benefit from the crime, but due to the particular mechanics or circumstances it seems like it can’t be them. The core to the solution then ends up being the explanation of how it was physically possible for them to do it.

Another good trick- >!never trust people who apparently hate each other! Christie loves to reveal that a pair of perfect enemies are in fact putting up a front, disguising the fact that they’re co-conspirators!<

The cult classic video game Xenogears takes some pretty heavy inspiration from Childhood’s End, among various other things. In the original Japanese one major character is outright named Karellen.

Classic sci-fi is well out of my usual area so I would never have read this book without Xenogears, but I’m very glad I did

It would be funny if he was still fake but had been made up in the third century rather than much later.

So some guy creates this coin of a made up emperor as some elaborate prank, and then since we can prove it was old enough to be genuine we assume that said emperor was real

I don’t know it well but the Salonica campaign was regarded by some contemporaries as one of the worst fronts a British soldier could get sent to, generally because of outbreaks of malaria. I can’t really answer any of your specific questions but certainly don’t be under the impression that things were much better there than in other theatres.

My only source on this campaign right now is Patricia Cara’s ‘A Lab of One’s Own’, about British female scientists and suffragettes in the war. There’s not much in there about it, but it does pop up since a number of women were sent to establish hospitals in Serbia and then later in the Salonica front

It’s not true, unfortunately. There’s no references to Anne having had six fingers until propaganda well after her death.

It does affect my choice, not because amateurs cannot write good serious history- more that good qualifications can be considered as a guarantee that someone knows what they’re talking about. But there are plenty of other things one can look at for the same purpose- reviews by those with good credentials, history writing awards, etc.

As an example, I recently bought a book about the American Civil War- James Oakes’ ‘Freedom National’. This isn’t a topic I know well, and I didn’t recognise the name of the author nor the name of the university they work at. Their book is making a provocative argument. All that makes me quite wary- this book could be garbage! But when I look into it I find that this book was nominated for an award, and received good reviews from some of the biggest names in that field. That reassures me- even if I find that I disagree with the arguments made in the book, I have good reason to believe that it’s legitimate scholarship.

So generally I want to find some indication that an author knows what they’re talking about before buying or reading a book. But qualifications are only one of many possible indications.

The only recent popular history I know of (excepting the one that isn’t out yet!) is Mike Rapport’s Year of Revolutions.

For some much older books providing narratives of particular countries, you have Stanley Pech’s ‘Czech Revolution of 1848’, John Rath’s ‘Viennese Revolution of 1848’, and Istvan Deak’s ‘The Lawful Revolution’ about Hungary, all of which I believe can be found on archive.org.

Outside of books there’s a season of Mike Duncan’s podcast ‘Revolutions’ which is a good overview, and he’s got a bibliography on his podcast’s website.

My favourite history podcast is ‘The Siecle’, about France 1814-1914. It doesn’t update very often but it’s really excellent, well sourced, with transcripts and additional notes available on the website

Martyn Rady also did a book on the Habsburg Empire in Oxford University Press’s ‘Very Short Introduction’ series which might be worth checking out