In 1881, after succeeding in its (ninth) attempt to kill Alexander II, the Russian terrorist group “People’s Will” warned the new Tsar that a “whole people cannot be exterminated, nor can its discontent be subdued by repression; that only strengthens it”. Words so chillingly applicable to America’s “war on terrorism” show that it is not only recent history which is relevant today.

The quotation comes from Peter Oxley’s volume on Russia, one of the first three titles in the new Oxford Advanced History series. Although he gives more space to the fashionable Communist period, Oxley includes enough material on the tsarist era to convey the richness of Russian culture, the durability of Russian authoritarianism and the long suffering of the Russian people. And, unlike other textbooks on “modern” Russia, this takes the reader on from Bolshevism to democracy.

Martin Roberts gives equal weight to the periods before and after the First World War and he brings both alive with vivid personal detail taken from a variety of sources. Roberts must regret that his volume had to end in 1964 to fit A-level syllabuses. But he updates it by, for example, getting students to investigate the attitudes of present political parties towards public ownership. He also avoids too British a viewpoint when dealing with episodes such as the 1857 Indian Revolt (not “Mutiny”).

Alison Kitson’s volume on Germany, reflecting the obsession in schools with Hitler, is the least balanced of the series. Nine out of 17 chapters deal with Nazism, compared with two on Bismarck and none on the First World War. Surely sixth-formers would be more interested in Germans’ experience of the Western Front than in “structuralist” and “intentionalist” interpretations of Nazi Germany.

Still, the book has the merits of its series, the best yet produced for the new exam specifications. All contain much readable narrative history as well as clear directions on how to use the material for A-level questions and key skills. All use wide-ranging sources to vitalise and authenticate the text; I especially liked Kitson’s extracts from Victor Klemperer’s diary. Excellent value.

Why, though, would a teacher who had invested pound;15.50 per student in Weimar and Nazi Germany (John Murray SHP, reviewed in TESFriday magazine, September 15, 2000) spend a further pound;10.99 on Hitler’s Germany as its “ideal companion”? Jane Jenkins and Edgar Feuchtwanger use long documents in small italic print (some duplicated from the original SHP textbook) to grind their historiographical mill. The only part that made me sit up was Feuchtwanger’s account of his childhood in Nazi Germany.

By contrast, Bob Whitehead’s The Extension of the Franchise, like others in the Heinemann Advanced History series, has a dearth of written and visual evidence. Most chapters contain only one or two short quotations andor pictures (except the Suffragettes, who get six illustrations). This makes for dull reading. It also fails to communicate the language and images of the past - vital to students faced with source-based questions. The text is informative; but readers will search in vain for the “quotes from the speeches of Sir Robert Peel” which they are directed to use.

It is good to see books covering longer periods, but what about covering different countries? Volumes on America and France, say, could take students of modern history back to the time of the AtlanticDemocratic Revolution. They would then see that Stalin’s forerunner in state terror was not Napoleon (as Oxley suggests) but Robespierre, a leader as ruthlessly “incorruptible” as Bin Laden himself.

Vyvyen Brendon is the author of The Age of Reform, The Edwardian Age and The First World War (Hodder amp; Stoughton)