History reading group

The Department also runs a VI Form “Reading Group” for those VI form boys and girls with a genuine talent and interest in the subject, and with an intention of reading History at university. For the first two terms of each academic year a book is chosen in advance and gatherings take place every two weeks to discuss the sections read. Conversation ranges widely at these events, from the content of the book itself, through the style of the author, to deeper questions of the historiography of the period under review. They are an excellent preparation for university interviews whilst at the same time simply stimulating minds in a genuinely academic atmosphere.
For 2005/2006 the chosen books were:

Michaelmas Term 2005

Ten Days That Shook The World John Reed

An essential book of the Russian Revolution

Below is the description from the “Penguin Classics” Edition:

“In Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed conveys, with the immediacy of cinema, the impression of a whole nation in ferment and disintegration. A contemporary journalist writing in the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm, he gives a gripping record of the events in Petrograd in November 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally seized power. Containing verbatim reports both of speeches by leaders and the chance comments of bystanders, set against an idealized backcloth of the proletariat, soldiers, sailors, and peasants uniting to throw off oppression, Reed's account is the product of passionate involvement and remains an unsurpassed classic of reporting.”

Lent Term 2006

Stalin Robert Service

Harold Shukman, Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford
'For an understanding of Stalin and his place in modern Russian history - Robert Service’s book is unsurpassed'

Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sunday Times
This outstanding biography of lightly worn authority, wide research and superb intuition will be read for decades.