Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25837 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-11-18
• Rating: Exempt
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 6
• Running time: 960 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Stretching from the Stone Age to the year 2000, Simon Schama's Complete History of Britain does not pretend to be a definitive chronicle of the turbulent events which buffeted and shaped the British Isles. What Schama does do, however, is tell the story in vivid and gripping narrative terms, free of the fustiness of traditional academe, personalising key historical events by examining the major characters at the centre of them. Not all historians would approve of the history depicted here as shaped principally by the actions of great men and women rather than by more abstract developments, but Schama's way of telling it is a good deal more enthralling as a result.

Schama successfully gives lie to the idea that the history of Britain has been moderate and temperate, passing down the generations as stately as a galleon, taking on board sensible ideas but steering clear of sillier, revolutionary ones. Nonsense. Schama retells British history the way it was--as bloody, convulsive, precarious, hot-blooded and several times within an inch of haring off onto an entirely different course. Schama seems almost to delight in the goriness of history. Themes returned to repeatedly include the wars between the Scots and the Irish and the Catholic/Protestant conflicts--only the Irish question remains unresolved by the new millennium. As Britain becomes a constitutional monarchy, Schama talks less of Kings and Queens but of poets and idea-makers like Orwell. Still, with his pungent, direct manner and against an evocative visual and aural backdrop, Schama makes history seem as though it happened yesterday, the bloodstains not yet dry.

On the DVD: The Complete History of Britain extras are generously packaged on a separate disc and include the original score and a Simon Schama biography. There's an interesting "promotional message" to camera in which Schama explains the role of a cab driver, Wally, in inspiring the series, along with an interview with Mark Lawson in which Schama stresses the deliberate subjectivity of these programmes and an inaugural BBC History lecture in which he defends TV's ability to transpose history to camera. --David Stubbs

Special Features
English
Region 2

Synopsis
Eminent historian Simon Schama guides the viewer through over 5000 years worth of history in this epic BBC series. Starting in 3000 B.C. and ending at the turn of the 21th century, the series takes in all the key points in British history. From the invasions of the Romans and the Normans, through the Civil War and the conflicts between England and its neighbours, the programme is lovingly presented from the actual locations of the historic events. The box set contains the whole series over six discs.

Customer Reviews

useful but numbing
I liked Schama's work as far as it went, but by comparison to the video histories of Ken Burns it suffers. It was just too much Simon. It is well-written and interesting but, after 10 hours or so it was just a bit droning. It was more a history of Britian's leaders than of Britain. I would dearly have loved to just hear other voices on the narration or to have had some set up to certain events that seemed to have little context.

It was a necessarily edited and reduced version but how do you leave out the chapter on ending slavery in the UK? It was a world shaking event. How do you give a passing glance to it without a mention of Wilberforce? Ah it hit me. Simon has an obvious distaste for Christianity and has shaded his history to reflect it. Every evil thing that rulers did in the guise of faith is highlighted and every noble thing is minimized or more likely, excluded. It is a history of Britian that is void of any spiritual vibrancy. In that regard it lacks integrity.

I can recommend the work as a whole as engaging and helpful but please give us less of Simon says.

A little too dull for me I'm afraid
I managed to sit through the first two disks but I'm afraid I found Mr Schama's presenting style somewhat annoying and rather flat. The material felt rushed and left me very much under whelmed. Perhaps I should have persevered and watched some more but I got fed up and sold my copy.

Superb approach to British history
I love Simon Schama's approach, whilst it certainly isn't revolutionary he has an uncanny knack for making his subject matter both exciting and educational in equal measure. As a grand sweep across thousands of years this is unrivalled in my opinion and for anyone who wants to possess an overview of British history this is priceless as no book, no matter how well it was written, could hope to cover the same amount of material on display here with the depth and clarity that Simon Schama has managed. The only qualms I can have with it are that speaking purely subjectively I would have preferred slightly different subject matter. The choices on the whole are very good, but too much time for instance is invested into a discussion on the plague (a whole episode as it happens) whilst the Hundred Years' War and the War of the Roses are left with only fleeting references. Of course the plague is undeniably of collossal importance, but as this subject has been covered so frequently and so well by other documentaries I found it a touch tedious and unrewarding to sit through on this occasion. That apart I can't say a bad word about this and I found myself compulsively racing through 3 or 4 episodes a night until it was finished.