What period in history fascinates you the most?

[CorneliaSt]

My degree was in history (special subject was the French Revolution) but it seems like a lifetime ago. I can barely remember any of it so it's my new year's resolution to start reading more and hauling the old knowledge out.

I'm as fascinated with WW2 as I ever was as a geeky child, but I also particularly enjoy Renaissance history and a good old king and queen story.

If you have any book recommendations that would be great.

Ancient Egypt, Tudor and WW2

Everything from the big bang through too ancient anthro paleontology and up to the modern day with a particular interest in evolution and social and domestic history focusing on women and children. I do however have no interest in war at all

Everything from the big bang through too ancient anthro paleontology

Not history though- apparently. Which gets my goat.

@Miljea

I find the medieval period fascinating. The Dark Ages. Dark monasteries providing a glimmer of (Christian) light against the shortness and brutality of so many lives. Paganism. Given how so many of the late medieval ways of living, deep in our rural countryside, had echoes way into the C20, prior to WW1, and how that changed so much.

There is the footprint of an Iron Age village in the woods 200m from me. I often wonder about their lives.

People's lives weren't necessarily all that short or brutal, though. Most historians won't use the term 'dark ages' any more, because it perpetuates such a negative view of this period.

There's a really interesting bit of recent research that found that some Anglo-Saxon medicine actually works well - it's being incorporated into modern treatments. Which I find amazing.

Anyway, I pressed return too soon and didn't answer the question. I do love medieval history (it's my job), but lately I've been getting really interested in the seventeenth century, too. I'm really interested in all the new discoveries about the stars and microscopes, which are so exciting.

I also love textile history from any period, and anything to do with women being able to express things and do things we're told they 'couldn't'.

Ancient Greece
The Holocaust
The Tudors

@doadeer

Restoration always reminds me of this iconic tune 🤣 m.youtube.com/watch?v=P2kyNbZc7oc

I did a BA and MA in history specialising in early modern. I did a lot on history of mental health, prisons, homosexuality and male identity. I loved it. Still fascinates me

Ha! Love that Horrible Histories song

Ooh good question! I would say ice age Europe (although that's prehistory!) or the hippy trail period.

All of it really but if I had to choose I'd say medieval times

I cycle through things - delve into it with several books and then move on...

• The rise of the Nazis: in particular how it seemed and felt to an average person in Germany at the time

• The Irish Famine

• Medieval times

• Victorian times

My interest usually tends towards social history though, particularly the working class which obviously was the vast majority of people.

I wish there were more books about how the average person lived at various times rather than royalty, politicians and the upper class.

@SarahAndQuack there's a fascinating book called "Soul Made Flesh" (Carl Zimmer) about the advances in medical science in the 1660s, specifically research into the brain.
It must have been amazing to realise that there was a rational physical explanation for the human physiology - all the things people had grown up thinking "because God says so" and then..

Wars of the Roses with special interest in Richard 111. I hope the Missing Princes project will soon be able to solve the mystery of the Princes in the Tower. I think I've read almost all books fiction and non fiction on the subject my to read list is getting horribly small

Ooh! That books sounds great, thank you.

Though, I have to say I very strongly doubt most people grew up thinking 'because God says so'. Medieval medical science is very rational and logical in a lot of ways - people weren't just credulous idiots forced into submission by the Church. Some medieval ideas about memory and cognition are very sophisticated (their ideas about training your memory are now known to be extremely sound).

Mali during the time of Mansa Musa
Ancient Mesopotamia
pre-revolution France, especially the time period around the Huguenot massacre

oooh, and pretty much the whole of the Ottoman empire and Byzantium empire. Crazy times.

Ow history is my favourite I could read about it all day Egyptian Victorian tudors medieval King and Queens have this year looked into do a degree in history but not to sure I have the time 😩

I love early English history, but I’ve got a Master’s in WWII history. Its a huge area. If you want a recommendation, I’d need to know whet bit of it you are interested in, @CorneliaSt

The ever popular Tudors for me- more specifically Henry's wives. History and historical fiction (e.g. Elizabeth Norton, Tracy Borman, Alison Weir, Hilary Mantel, Philippa Gregory)
Also Richard III (e.g. David Baldwin, SK Penman)

History at school bored the socks off me and never had any interest in British kings and queens etc but I am fascinated by the history of the Deep South and slavery and the civil rights movement. No idea why, tbh, it's not an actual part of my history, as far as I know, but anything that involves real people and injustice just fascinates me. Potato famine also.

I love it all, fascinated by ancient artefacts showing day to day lives - bowls, pots and pans, ancient toys - shows that what preoccupies us now isn't so different really to what preoccupied us then. I am missing the British Museum (other museums are available) - particularly the sections on Mestopotamia, and the old hoardes from Europe etc.

@Loyaultemelie

Wars of the Roses with special interest in Richard 111. I hope the Missing Princes project will soon be able to solve the mystery of the Princes in the Tower. I think I've read almost all books fiction and non fiction on the subject my to read list is getting horribly small

If the fate of the princes ever becomes known (with no doubt at all and fully backed up with evidence) then at least half of the people with a strong interest in the subject will refuse to believe it's true Which is probably just as well, as we'd have nothing left to argue about discuss!

From the Tudors to the Edwardians, although my 1600s are a bit more shaky tbh

Victorian social history. Love books like The Blackest Streets and The Five.

German colonial period in South pacific

Blimey, that’s niche. I’m interested in the South Pacific and have visited one tiny corner of it, but I’d never heard of the German colonies there.

That's true @BamboozledandBefuddled