For many this was the definitive biography of Lincoln until Doris Kearns Goodwin’s magisterial Team of Rivals.

It is still a fine introduction to the life and times of America’s greatest president, though the comparative lack of attention on the Lincoln’s cabinet relationships leads to a much less rich discussion of his presidency than Kearns Goodwin so brilliantly achieved. In particular the warmth of the friendship with Seward is not fully explored and there is no discussion of the attempt on Seward’s life that parallelled the killing of Lincoln.

But there is still much to recommend this. It has a more detailed focus than Kearns Goodwin on Lincoln’s youth and career before his achievement of a national profile with his opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act that led him to the presidency. And it is written in an engaging and laconic style that echoes Lincoln’s own voice.

Why Socrates died? is an entertaining and convincing exploration of the military and political milieu of 5th century Athens and its implications for understanding the trial and execution of Socrates.

It benefits from being refreshingly clear sighted about Socrates, portraying him as a more ambiguous character than the unimpeachably innocent victim of Plato’s accounts.

Plato, it should be remembered, had as his ideal state, as portrayed in The Republic, something we would regard in the contemporary world as fascist. Even in his own day Plato’s Republic would have represented a regression from democratic Athens. Hence Plato was a Spartan sympathiser, and he had a family member amongst the Thirty Tyrants. Socrates, Plato’s teacher and ideal, was tainted by his association with this oligarchic and tyrannical Athenian faction, and so in the context of civil strife in Athens and more general war with Sparta, could have been regarded as a politically threatening figure.

Waterfield’s thesis is doubtless controversial but no less entertaining or informative for all that.

A Good German is Giles MacDonogh’s biography of Adam von Trott zu Solz, a key figure in the 1944 plot against Hitler, providing it with much of its foreign policy and diplomatic leadership while Stauffenberg organised the military aspects of the attempted coup.

Trott was well qualified for this role. He had been a Rhodes scholar to Oxford and as a result was well acquainted with leading British figures of the time including Stafford Cripps and Richard Crossman. He had also travelled extensively in the United States and China. But with only a few honourable exceptions, most of these contacts, some who had been friends, interpreted his decision to return to Germany with the rise of Nazism as a betrayal of democratic principles rather than the fundamental commitment to a democratic Germany that it was.

As Trott discovered during the war the Allies showed considerable distrust for his overtures. In part the distrust that the British had for this was because of a stunning German intelligence success early in the war, known as the Venlo incident, which resulted in the capture of a number of senior British intelligence officers who had been lured to a purported meeting with a Resistance group. But the origins of this distrust appear, in fact, deeper than the enormity of war. The first half of the book, which contains some of the chapters I found most difficult, deals in significant part with the relative alienness of British and German cultures in the 1930s which gave rise to diverse cultural and political misunderstandings between Trott and his British contemporaries. These misunderstandings contributed to the misinterpretation by many of Trott’s decision to return. Hence, in particular Crossman in British government during the war, denigrated his bona fides and undermined his attempts to establish contacts between the German Resistance and the Allies. This misinterpretation still echoes down the years with, for example, Tom Cruise’s Stauffenberg movie, Valkyrie, provoking an article in the Guardian by Justin Cartwright, which 60 years on raised the question that the German resisters may not have been the democratic allies that they are now generally accepted to be.

The issues that MacDonogh raises here are still relevant in our world at 21st Century war. Today even more alien cultures than the European powers of 1939 are finding themselves in confrontation and conflict. For there ever to be peace there must eventually be understanding, and an important starting point for such a process must be a realisation that the narratives of conflict, identity and responsibility may be wildly divergent.

Trott’s decision to work within for the undermining of Hitler was was not an unambiguous one. Trott, and many of his Resistance colleagues, questioned how their roles within the Nazi state may have contributed to advancing the ideology that they actually wished to destroy. One particularly interesting chapter highlighting this ambiguity deals with Trott’s foreign ministry responsibilities towards India and his relationship with Bose, the leader of the Axis aligned Indian National Army, and the Axis efforts to undermine one of his few true British friends, Stafford Cripps, efforts to come to a settlement in India during the war.

The final half of the book deals in considerable, sometimes dizzying, detail with the organisation of the 20 July coup. I found a parallel in the description of Trott’s efforts in this with that of Jean Moulin in the French Resistance at the same time as set out in Mathew Cobb’s book on the subject. Both expended considerable energy not just in removing the Nazis but thinking about what the post Nazi future would look like for their countries.

In spite of the knowledge of how things are going to turn out the final portions of this book are filled with dread. The courage of the 20 July conspirators is still an awe inspiring thing. This book shows the depth of their intellectual, administrative and philosophical efforts too. As such it is an important contribution to the literature of the Second World War.

Ireland, 1912 – 1985 is a wonderfully opinionated, highly entertaining and deeply erudite history of Ireland from the beginning of the Home Rule Crisis to the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

It is certainly the best single volume history of 20th century Ireland. Each chapter contains much that is novel and insightful even for those familiar with the periods under discussion. The author’s comparisons of Ireland to other countries on the periphery of Europe which obtained independence at about the same time, such as Finland and Poland, lifts the book out of any risk of parochialism: This approach places Irish history in its European context and allows for a more clear sighted assessment of what we, as a nation, can be proud of as well as what we have failed at and where we should be ashamed. Prof Lee is scathing in his judgements of the lazy and stupid, from political leaders through academics to journalists, but is highly sympathetic to those ordinary people, particularly Northern nationalists, who have found themselves on the losing side of history.

A work of genius.

Margery Forester’s “Michael Collins: The Lost Leader” was generally regarded as the definitive biography of Collins until Tim Pat Coogan’s more recent work. Where Coogan excels on the military aspects of Collins career, particularly the conduct of the intelligence war, Forester offers a more personal picture, with much of her work based on family papers. The result is a fine readable account of Collins life, with the sections from the truce to Collins’ death particularly gripping.

Forester notes how Collins mentioned to one of his colleagues during his final tour of Cork, that “Dev” – Eamon deValera, the anti-treaty political leader – was rumoured to be in the same locality. She doesn’t explore the theory that this is exactly why Collins himself was there – to explore options for peace. Unfortunately breakdown in intermediaries meant that this effort ended in the tragedy of Collins’ own death.

She also subscribes somewhat to the theory of youthful impetuosity and lack of field craft as principle factors contributing to Collins death at Beal na mBlath, wishing that he had acquiesed in Emmet Dalton’s instruction to Collins’ driver to “Drive like hell” through the ambush when the first shots hit, rather than stop and fight. Accounts elsewhere from other members of Collins’ party, state that the road was strewn with broken bottles ahead of the dray that blocked the convoy’s way. This suggests that Collins may have been more tactically astute than he has previously be given credit for, in ordering the halt rather than, in an attempt to run the ambush, risking catastrophic damage to the tires of the vehicles and rendering the entire convoy sitting ducks in the midst of hostile countryside.

Whatever the circumstances the abiding tragedy of Collins’ death is well conveyed in this book which shows his growth from impetuous youth to effective revolutionary to statesman in a few short years, and leaves the reader with the aching wonder of what might have been achieved had he lived.