Much of what we know, or think we know, about the court of Henry VIII comes directly from the paintings of Hans Holbein. There’s the famous portrait of the king himself – puffy, phallic and cruel, looking more like a murderer than a monarch.

Nearly 30 years ago, dendrochronologists working on the roof of Salisbury Cathedral made a remarkable discovery. Not only did they find that some ancient beams were made of wood grown overseas; they also found that a few were incised with Arabic numerals.

Oceanic art has inspired a vast literature. Since the early 20th century, hundreds of catalogues and monographs have highlighted the collections of museums, explored genres and traditions and, more recently, celebrated contemporary practice. The achievement of Toi Te Mana (which roughly translates as ‘arts of power’) is of another order altogether.

In an episode​ of Seinfeld from 1996, Kramer and Newman hatch an ingenious moneymaking scheme. In New York, where they live, bottles and cans can be recycled for five cents each, but in Michigan the refund is ten cents.

The Forrest Gump of Asia? Not quite – but the life of Huang Chin-tao, as explored in Anna Beth Keim’s Heaven Does Not Block All Roads (Hurst), reflects many of the turning points in the modern history of one of the most controversial places on the continent: Taiwan.

Michael Braddick’s Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian (Verso) had to contend with its subject’s rather private nature. However, like Hobsbawm, Hill (1912–2003) was for years kept under surveillance by MI5, and maintained a voluminous correspondence.

A host of Second World War anniversaries this year highlighted the enormous part played in that conflict by new and ever more destructive technologies. Gareth Williams’ The Impossible Bomb (Yale University Press) opened my eyes to the role of British science in the development of nuclear weapons.

On 7 December 2015 the Kennedy Centre Honours were awarded to Carole King, George Lucas, Rita Moreno, Seiji Ozawa and Cicely Tyson. King sat by the White House Christmas tree during the afternoon reception wearing her medal and laughing as Barack Obama recited the most familiar of her thousands of song lines: ‘You make me feel like a natural woman.’

Growing up​ in Liverpool we knew about mass violence. The Blitz had left bombsites that were thickest around the docks. The cenotaph in front of St George’s Hall told us what had happened to the men who enlisted there. Surrounded by Murphys and Rooneys you could hardly forget the Great Famine that pushed waves of Irish immigrants into Liverpool cellars and court housing.

Biographies of historians aren’t always terribly interesting: we are a tribe that usually does little except sit in archives, libraries, seminar rooms and lecture halls. But sometimes you can find colleagues whose lives are more active and perhaps a bit more interesting than the run-of-the-mill.