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1938: Hitler’s Gamble, by Giles MacDonogh Hitler’s greatest gamble in 1938 was his determination to occupy the Czechoslovak Sudetenland, even at the risk of sparking a European war. Neither Neville Cham- berlain nor the French prime minister, Edouard Daladier, was prepared to play for such high stakes and they threw in their chips, giving the Führer what he wanted without bloodshed. It will therefore come as a surprise that in Giles MacDonogh’s 1938: Hitler’s Gamble, a mere seven paragraphs are devoted to the Munich conference that effectively sealed Czechoslovakia’s fate. Instead it is the Austrian capital that takes centre stage in this compelling survey of a tumultuous year.

Between 1945 and his death in 1961 Ernest Hemingway published only two books, apart from collections of stories mostly written before the war. The two were Across the River and Into the Trees and The Old Man and the Sea. The first was generally considered a failure, the second a success; and it’s doubtless perversity that makes me much prefer Across the River. The meagre tally might suggest he was burned out, but for most of the time he was working hard on various projects, and the difficulty was to finish books.

‘The second world war lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion and claimed the lives of over 50 million people. That represents 23,000 lives lost every day, or more than six people killed every minute, for six long years.’ This neat summary is characteristic of the way Andrew Roberts uses statistics to bring home to the reader the enormity, the waste and the horror of that terrible conflict. The book is long, but it is tightly written, every page packed with terse comment, well-organised facts and, often, telling details. It has a thesis: Hitler lost the war essentially because he was a Nazi, and allowed his race theories and ideological cruelty to get in the way of rational decision-taking.

‘No English monarch until Victoria — that is, long after monarchy had become the “dignified”, rather than the “efficient” part of the constitution — remained free from challenge, and three lost their thrones to rebellions.’ David Horspool’s new book is a detailed survey of the English men, women and mobs who have been prepared to risk life and property to rise up against power. It starts in the time of the Norman yoke and ends with the Poll Tax riots in the time of the Norman Tebbit. It is, to adapt Carlyle, a ‘history of irate men’. There’s an awful lot of ground to cover and Horspool goes over it at a hell of a scamper.

Mrs Noyce kept on being prosecuted, appearing immaculately clad on her many court appearances. But she carried on, keeping her thoughts to herself. She probably echoed the complaint of another madam, Margaret Sempill, in the 19th Century: when she was accused by the Kirk of keeping prostitutes — in particular the very pretty Katherine Lenton, who slept with the French Amabassador — she commented: ‘I get the name, but others the profit.’ She was whipped for her cheek. The French Ambassador was not troubled. Over recent years, Fry’s series of Scottish histories have built a splendid track record of overturning cherished myths. Edinburgh’s fabled respectability is just one of them.

This is a glorious book with one crippling flaw. Let's put the ecstasy before the agony. Faber and Faber, founded in 1929, commissioned some of the best book jackets of all time; Private Eye, retracting its claws for once, called the firm Fabber and Fabber — of course that applied to the authors as well as the designs. A few of the designs seem dated in a bad sense, but most of them are joyfully, exhilaratingly redolent of their time — especially the art deco and ‘Contemp’ry’ ones. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover — an update on ‘Fine feathers don’t make fine birds’ — but you can judge a lot of these books by their jackets.