Maybe you should read the column on the right before you read this one, because it illustrates the point I make perfectly. Where GOD'S SECRET AGENTS is a "popular history" which can be enjoyed by just about anyone with a passing interest in history, MICHAEL BURLEIGH'S EARTHLY POWERS is, to my mind, an academic work, and despite the inclusion of some highly selective images (David's THE DEATH OF MARAT, for example), I doubt it will appeal to anyone other than academics. It is, by contrast, dry, and weighty, both in its physical presence and in its coverage. I studied the Enlightenment for my OU degree course and reading Burleigh's book makes me realise how fantastically good the OU are at getting their material to hold your interest. Earthly Powers is an examination of the politics of religion and the religion of politics in Europe from the French Revolution until the Great War. Its scope encompasses the great thinkers of the Enlightenment as well as the pseudo-religious aspects fo Marxism, and considers the exploits of O'Connell, Mazzini and Garibaldi and includes the rise of Christian socialism. Burleigh's previous book, THE THIRD REICH, received outstanding acclaim from the academic world. I personally found the current volume harder going than GOD'S SECRET AGENTS, but then I am no longer a student of history, but only an interested onlooker. HARPER COLLINS Hardback £25.00

ALICE HOGGE describes her book GOD'S SECRET AGENTS as a "popular history". If, by that, she means that it will appeal to more than academics, she's absolutely right . I devour popular history by people like David Starkey and Simon Schama with an appetite I normally reserve for Stephen King. GOD'S SECRET AGENTS is popular history at its best. Everyone knows about the Gunpowder Plot - or at least, they know the date for which it was planned, some of us will be able to name a couple of the people involved in the conspiracy, maybe a few more will know that we celebrate the foiling of the plot on November 5th by burning a stuffed "guy" and letting off fireworks to signify the involvement of gunpowder. Few people apart from those academics I mentioned earlier will know what led up to the plot, and why it ultimately happened.

I was unaware, for example, that Norfolk was a hotbed of catholicism, or that huge numbers of Oxford scholars were forced out of England to study with Jesuits in specially convened schools on the continent before embarking on their collective mission, to re-convert the English people back to Catholicism. Of particular interest to me were the revelations that the vast majoroityof recorded incidents of torture on English subjects were committed during the reign of Elizabeth I and that hanging, drawing and quartering was stlill on the statute books as a punishment for trason until late Victorian times. It is this kind of attention to detail that makes GOD'S SECRET AGENTS such a readable book.

Scarcely a page goes by without a quote from Tudr England, and an inconceivable amount of time must have gone into the research for this book. Some details seem to have no basis in fact, like the journey from the North Norfolk coast at Happisburgh (pronounced Hazeborough by locals),  inland, when Alice describes the wailing wind through the trees and the baying of dogs, for example, but then you read the list of sources and the realisation hits you that she has sat and read documents that give her the minutiae of detail that set this book apart from the dry, dusty world of academicia and make a gripping account of treason and treachery available to all of us who are capable of opening a book and reading it. There is an inevitable world of snobbery when it comes to history, as with any other academic subject - this book rises above it and I feel enriched by it. I came away from GOD'S SECRET AGENTS feeling I'd learned something - I regaled my wife with Alice's accounts of what happened in Oxburgh Hall and Grimston, near Kings Lynn, for example, and was proud to be able to talk about things I'd learned from the book.

This is a superlative work of popular history. Having recently read Philippa Gregory's accounts of life in Tudor England, Alice Hogge's volume puts it all into a different perspective. Thoroughly readable, this is Alice's first book. I sincerely hope it will not be her last. HARPER COLLINS Hardback £20.00