Product Description

`This is an enormously enjoyable book, a non-systematic, chatty and wilful piece of work, slaloming through familiar terrain with brio and dash'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48486 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 720 pages

Review
`One of the most important books of recent years' --Daily Mail

'A fine work of popular history, and the fact that it is consistently entertaining in no way obscures the underlying seriousness' --Literary Review

'A very funny, extremely opinionated, always provocative and often thoughtful read... Wilson is endlessly entertaining'
--Dominic Sandbrook, Observer

Review
'A fine work of popular history, and the fact that it is consistently entertaining in no way obscures the underlying seriousness'

Review
'A very funny, extremely opinionated, always provocative and often thoughtful read... Wilson is endlessly entertaining'

Customer Reviews

A TRUE ICONOCLAST
This is the most absurd book of history I have ever read. Wilson is ruthlessly judgemental, sloppy with his dates, casual in his disdain for the niceties of 'proper' history, and his book is brilliant.

In his lucid, digressive style, Wilson delineates an alternately hilarious and devastating analysis of the major events - political, cultural, religious - in British life over the last sixty years. It induced in me convulsions of sadness, laughter, and anger, and I only wish other historians had the temerity - not to mention the learning - to deliver a book of this standard.

Another Wilson easy read
What you would expect from A N Wilson, an easy and sometimes humorous read of happenings of "Our Times"
All history is written from a biased view (and Wilson is no exception), would you expect a protestant historian to write on the Reformation in the same vein as a catholic writer?
Wilson in all his factual books makes the reader hunger for more information on some subjects which deserve more space and in depth research, this is not a bad thing; the bibliography is very good for making further queries.
One point, why do we have to have "Notes" at the end of the book? I much prefer footnotes on each page. The constant turning to the rear of the book can be a distraction.
As far as I am concerned a good book well worth the purchasing.
What now,is there to be a book from Wilson on the "Future" ?

Wilson at his worst
Wilson's hodge podge look at 'Our Times' skates over important issues in his snide polemical work. Not that I mind polemics just that they need to be argued elsewhere. The book is full of of backbiting comments about the personality of those involved in the times we've lived through and although entertaining in the saloon bar they are not the stuff of history. I struggled to get through it and have now consigned it to the bin. Wilson's book will be remembered when Macaulay and Gibbon are long forgotten - but not 'til then.