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The Story of England
In this new history of England, Tom Beaumont James uses archaeology to present a fresh view of the events that have shaped the country. Both accessible and comprehensive, The Story of England guides us from prehistory to Cool Britannia, through invasions, wars, disease and empire-building, peopled by monarchs, rebels, politicians, and others who have left an indelible mark on England’s development.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
256 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 30, 2007
this review first appeared on [http://intraspace.blogspot.com]
just so that i can’t be pegged down by my review of the miles book, here is something completely different - a history of england. being of english descent myself, and always interested to hear what went on in that country, i wanted to get a book like this to gain a kind of background knowledge of england’s history. when i say ‘a book like this’ - i mean a book of less than 400 pages.
the problems with that are immediately obvious - our author (whom we shall simply refer to as ‘tom’) has had to leave a lot out, hasn’t filled in areas which might have been interesting, glossed over things, and assumed that we know things that we don’t.
not that there isn’t anything interesting in the book (there is) but tom is obviously a bit of a fan of archeology, and he wastes space talking about the history of that science, when he could have been talking about some of the more fascinating things that that science has found out.
nonetheless, this book did give me a bit of narrative framework on which to hang the things i already knew about england, writing and history. so it was worth reading and kept me pretty engrossed.
gladometer ('how glad am i that i read it?') rating: reasonably glad.
just so that i can’t be pegged down by my review of the miles book, here is something completely different - a history of england. being of english descent myself, and always interested to hear what went on in that country, i wanted to get a book like this to gain a kind of background knowledge of england’s history. when i say ‘a book like this’ - i mean a book of less than 400 pages.
the problems with that are immediately obvious - our author (whom we shall simply refer to as ‘tom’) has had to leave a lot out, hasn’t filled in areas which might have been interesting, glossed over things, and assumed that we know things that we don’t.
not that there isn’t anything interesting in the book (there is) but tom is obviously a bit of a fan of archeology, and he wastes space talking about the history of that science, when he could have been talking about some of the more fascinating things that that science has found out.
nonetheless, this book did give me a bit of narrative framework on which to hang the things i already knew about england, writing and history. so it was worth reading and kept me pretty engrossed.
gladometer ('how glad am i that i read it?') rating: reasonably glad.
Displaying 1 of 1 review