Product Description

Change - sometimes gentle and subtle sometimes shocking and violent - is the dynamic of Schama's unapologetically personal history, especially the changes that wash over custom and habit, transforming our loyalties. At the heart of his history lie questions of compelling importance for our future as well as our past: what makes or breaks a nation - to whom do we give our allegiance and why? And where do the boundaries of our community lie - in our hearth and home, our village or city, tribe or faith? What is Britain, one country or many, one culture or several? Has British history unfolded "at the edge of the world" or right at the heart of it? All these themes are delivered to the reader in the stories which Schama tells. The great and wicked are all here - Becket and Thomas Cromwell, Robert the Bruce and Ann Boleyn, but so are countless more ordinary lives - an Irish monk waiting for the plague to kill him in his cell at Kilkenny; a small boy running through the streets of London to catch a glimpse of Elizabeth I.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20425 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
What do you get when you combine the resources and ethos of the BBC with the literary panache of one of the world's best narrative historians? The answer is Simon Schama's History of Britain, the first volume of which accompanies the BBC television series of the same name.

In a beautifully written and thoughtfully crafted book, studded with striking portraits, pictures and maps, Schama, the bestselling author of books on European cultural history such as The Embarrassment of Riches and Citizens, as well as 1999's Rembrandt's Eyes, has managed to be both conventional and provocative. He tells the official version of Britain's island story--from Roman Britain, through the Norman conquest, the struggles of the Henrys and Richards with their bolshie barons and cautious clerics, Edward I and the subjugation of Wales, King Death (the plague), and on to the Henrician reformation, before closing with the remarkable reign of the virgin queen, Elizabeth I.

While sticking to a script familiar to anyone who sat up and listened in history lessons at school, Schama brings it all alive, with memorable prose--Simon de Montfort's rebel parliament is described as inaugurating the "union between patriotism and insubordination"; with Henry VIII, Schama says, "you could practically smell the testosterone". And with fine sensitivity too, particularly on the symbolism of buildings, memorials, language and ceremonies, and on the complex relations between England and her Celtic and Catholic neighbours. If history must have gloss, then let it be written and presented like this. --Miles Taylor

Review
Described as an "epic book" by the publishers, this frequently bandied and much devalued term may be, for once, an understatement. Schama seems set to follow his Rembrandt's Eyes success with this book - part archaeology, part social history - and the accompanying 16-part television series, co-produced by the BBC and the History Channel. Writing in an engaging, accessible style and dotted with interesting illustrations, both of which more than balance the sheer bulk of the book, Schama approaches a broad sweep of our nation's history from 3500BC to our modern post-imperial state. He has set out to show that, as much as we have changed over the last 5500 years, much has remained in common between us and our ancestors. A worthy companion book to another of those authorial multi-part series (think Civilisation and The Ascent of Man) that the BBC does so well.

David Cannadine, The Observer
...a bravura performance by the Lord Macauley of our day.

Customer Reviews

History made accessible
This is a great book to read but I think it all the better for having Timothy West read it. He has the right voice to draw you into the story of Britain and want to keep listening. The best part about the whole story is how the book combines both elements of our history - continuity interspersed with shocks to the system - which the country deals with and incorporates into the fabric of what makes Britain. The other fascinating point is how the book deals with the successive influences on Britain and how we are the result of a continuing series of waves of immigration and war. I recommend this audio book because it tells a story and helps identify where we came from as a nation - something that is very relevant to today

A Brilliant Book
Simon Schama has a great gift for making history accessible and interesting. Ignore the carping comments from my fellow Scots about the book being mainly about England - whether we like it or not, the history of Britain (especially between the dates covered) was mainly about England. Scotland gets more than a fair amount of coverage in this book.

Ironic
Well done Simon Schama. If only history teachers the length a breadth of the country had half the enthusiasm this guy has, we would all have benefitted greatly. One of the reviewers talked about the three lions and football fans, and then went on to say it was a book about England. It does say on the cover " A History of Britain". This is the sort of misguided patriotism that this book cuts through, because history is completely full of ironies and Simon Schama exposes them masterfully to bring it all to life.