Product Description

King Canute, Lady Godiva, Guy Fawkes, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Grace Darling and other famous names from 3000 years of history live again in these 100 tragic, comic, stirring tales of adventure, folly and wickedness. These stories, many of them virtually forgotten, are Britain's heritage, told and illustrated with such verve and colour that they are the perfect way to give present-day children a sense of the excitement of history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8168 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-19
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

Review
BBC HISTORY - top ten books for February 06

From the Author
And if you want to ACT any of the stories in Britannia, there are play scripts of 25 of the stories - in fact everything you need to prepare a play - in BRITANNIA ON STAGE also published by Orion.

About the Author
Richard Brassey is the author and illustrator of a host of colourful and original non-fiction books for children, among them the bestselling Nessie the Loch Ness Monster and The Story of Scotland, which won the TES/Saltire Society Award. He lives in Essex. Geraldine McCaughrean's novels and retellings for children have won her the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, the Whitbread Award and the Beefeater Award. A prolific author who writes for all ages, she lives in Berkshire with her husband and daughter, Ailsa. Richard Brassey writes and illustrates his own books on history and is currently working on 'The Story of London'.

Customer Reviews

Excellent for both kids and adults
This is always my first choice book a bedtime story for my 5 year old, if not always hers!
I have learned more than I would care to admit from reading these childrens orientated legends, each with a note on how the story originated.
A lovely book full of facsinating tales from our history. Thorougly recommended; by a dad anyway.....

A bright and fascinating book which sneaks history into children
Wow! This is the book that I wish I'd had as a child. I was never taught history in a sensible sequence, unfortunately, so I didn't built a chronology of events in my head. The result is a hopeless historian.
I am determined therefore to try and give my own children a decent internal time-line and this book is a perfect start (especially paired with Tony Robinsons' chronological `Kings and Queens'). It contains a vast range of short stories from King Leir 800BC through to the present day: King Arthur, King Alfred, The Fire of London, Glencoe, The Titanic, Votes for Women, Dunkirk, etc. Each is told as a tale from history with the more concrete facts briefly boxed to one side.
What's great about this book is that it isn't a turgid historical reference book - it presents the past with real human interest. Many of the earliest stories, McCaughrean notes, are more legend than truth but this folklore is part of our historical legacy. Other stories bring the era to life or cover an incident that gives a flavour of the history of the time. For example, the moving story of the 1914 Christmas Allies v Germany football match makes an appearance as does the tale of Eyam, the village who cordoned itself off to prevent the plague spreading to their neighbouring villages.
Each well-written story is only 3 or 4 pages long with plenty of text and wide-ranging stretching vocabulary. Every single page has a couple of attractive and colourful pictures giving book a very appealing feel. It's an absolute corker which I've just bought for my six-year old daughter. [...]

We read this every night
My son has just turned four and he loves this book. I really like it too. He insists that we read a story or two from it almost every night. What I really like is that these stories provoke lots of thinking and questioning on his part. And some of his questioning has led me to have to go off and find out more about the story in question.

People are astonished when they come round our house and he's re-enacting the 1940 evacuation of Dunkirk, or the battle of Agincourt.

The stories are very well written, not too long and with a nice vocabulary. The pictures are great. It would make a great birthday present that will last a long time.