Thread by @Lucy_Worsley

So here we are yet again, history-lovers.

Can you truly credit that this was the week in the year 2020 that a certain national newspaper yet again published a list of 'history books of the year' without including a single one by a woman?

#HistoryBooksByWomen

I saw a comment on here yesterday that I now can't locate, but the tweeter summed it up perfectly:

Shocking if they did it deliberately.

But perhaps somehow even more shocking if it was an accident, and that they just didn't even think.

#HistoryBooksByWomen

So the least I can do is share some books I've enjoyed this year myself. The idea of a list of history books of the year without Olivette Otele @OlivetteOtele and her AFRICAN EUROPEANS: AN UNTOLD HISTORY is really quite mad.
uk.bookshop.org/books/african-… #HistoryBooksByWomen

I was quite amazed to learn from @HistorianHelen Helen McCarthy's DOUBLE LIVES A HISTORY OF WORKING MOTHERHOOD just how late people became comfortable(-ish) with the idea of working women. Confident this one will be on lots of lists of books of the year.
uk.bookshop.org/books/double-l…

I have loved Kate Summerscale's storytelling since her Victorian detective debut, and this one doesn't disappoint: THE HAUNTING OF ALMA FIELDING is so so readable. Took me two evenings. #HistoryBooksByWomen
uk.bookshop.org/books/the-haun…

I hope that Priya Atwal's ROYALS AND REBELS THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SIKH EMPIRE which I've mentioned on here before has now been reprinted - I gather it sold out in record time! uk.bookshop.org/books/royals-a…

I feel that Francesca Wade owes me some share of her royalties as I recommended her book SQUARE HAUNTING: FIVE WOMEN, FREEDOM AND LONDON BETWEEN THE WARS to so many of my friends. I sometimes get annoyed by the Bloomsbury Group but this was the antidote.
uk.bookshop.org/books/square-h…

Melanie Back-Hansen @Househistorian and David Olosoga's @DavidOlusoga A HOUSE THROUGH TIME operates at what they rightly call a 'new frontier of popular, participatory history': the book of the show about houses that gripped everyone in the spring.
uk.bookshop.org/books/a-house-…

PALACE OF PALMS: TROPICAL DREAMS AND THE MAKING OF KEW by Kate Teltscher is an elegant guide to a lost and luscious Victorian world: ideal for the lover of garden history in your life. There are certainly one or two in mine.
uk.bookshop.org/books/palace-o…

OK - full disclosure - she's among my favourite colleagues - but Eleri Lynn's TUDOR TEXTILES is a beautiful thing & celebrates the amazing fragments of Elizabeth I's dress we had on display at Hampton Court last year (& lockdown cancelled our launch😠)
uk.bookshop.org/books/tudor-te…

@cath_fletcher's revelatory THE BEAUTY AND THE TERROR: AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE explained a feeling I'd had ever since my art history lessons that Renaissance life couldn't have been quite as relentlessly highbrow as it seemed.
uk.bookshop.org/books/the-beau…

And it seems appropriate to finish with Anna-Marie Crowhurst's BADLY BEHAVED WOMEN: THE STORY OF MODERN FEMINISM. The the perfect gift book with its beautiful pictures as well as inspiring words uk.bookshop.org/books/badly-be…

Do please tell me your own history books of the year.

(and I don't think you need a reminder to include some #HistoryBooksByWomen!)