- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; First Edition edition (14 April 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0297848054
- ISBN-13: 978-0297848059
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 14 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 743,254 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| |||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'Simon Young offers nugget after nugget of fascinating detail to paint a colourful portrait of a time when native savagery was being tempered by the arrival of Christianity in a country on the cusp between druidic power and the first cold grip of Church rule... This bawdy , picaresque and high-spirited book... wears its considerable learning lightly and opens a window on a time long neglected...' (IRELAND ON SUNDAY )
'Informative and entertaining, this is popular history at its best.' (FINANCIAL TIMES )
'A kind of Roman Britain version of Mad Max... a brilliant, funny, original book'. (Yorkshire Evening Press )
'Entertaining and informative... It throws new light on the mysterious Dark Ages'. (Belfast Telegraph )
'A cross between David Starkey and Bill Bryson with a bit of 1066 and all that mixed in'. (BBC South East )
'... an accessible overview of what Britain might have been like after the Romans had left.' (BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE )
'Enjoyable and ingenious, this breathes life into the period.' (SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY )
'very clever' (BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGY )
'hugely entertaining... What a joy to be able to recommend a book about misery, bloodshed and grisly superstition for being funny, compassionate and clear-eyed.' (INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY )
'Informative and entertaining, this is popular history at its best.' (FINANCIAL TIMES )
'A kind of Roman Britain version of Mad Max... a brilliant, funny, original book'. (Yorkshire Evening Press )
'Entertaining and informative... It throws new light on the mysterious Dark Ages'. (Belfast Telegraph )
'A cross between David Starkey and Bill Bryson with a bit of 1066 and all that mixed in'. (BBC South East )
'... an accessible overview of what Britain might have been like after the Romans had left.' (BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE )
'Enjoyable and ingenious, this breathes life into the period.' (SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY )
'very clever' (BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGY )
'hugely entertaining... What a joy to be able to recommend a book about misery, bloodshed and grisly superstition for being funny, compassionate and clear-eyed.' (INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY )
Belfast Telegraph
'Entertaining and informative... It throws new light on the mysterious Dark Ages'.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
History comes to life,
By
This review is from: A.D. 500: A Journey Through the Dark Isles of Britain and Ireland (Paperback)
How do you make history interesting? TV programme "Time Team" is one brilliant format but a book can't easily reproduce the challenging enthusiasm of Tony Robinson. Some authors tell it straight but rely on the quality of their writing to get them through - Robin Lane Fox, Michael Wood and Tom Holland "Crossing the Rubicon" are examples. Having browsed their efforts in bookshops I just couldn't imagine wading through 400+ pages of the stuff.The format here is very different - the book is written as a modern translation of a Byzantine scholar writing a guide-book to Britain in 500AD. Hearing it from a scholar doesn't sound very promising so the author does several things to keep it your interest. First, he gives the scholar a gossipy and arrogant character - this can grate a bit (he is a tremendous snob) but it injects lots of colour and makes the text very easy to read. Second, the scholar bases his guide-book in part on the report of an expedition from his country that visited Britain 20 years before - they tour round gathering information and getting into all sorts of scrapes, many of which involved in the death of one of them in various ways. This is great device because it allows for first-hand accounts of different events. Third, Stephen Young, the "true" author, contains his knowledge within the writing and only occasionally feels the need to back this up with a footnote that refers to a book or article. At times he stands accused of trying bit too hard to popularise the subject going for the quirky when the commonplace would be more interesting (e.g. the habit of offering guests your nipple to suck when we would shake hands is highlighted again and again and again, but we don't find out much about what people had to eat). Each chapter covers an area of Britain and within this there are around four specific places the expedition visited. There's a real selection, from palaces to villages and my personal favourites, the ruins of Roman fortresses and towns. This breaks up the text a bit but it makes it very good for reading in a train or underground where stations do not always conveniently coincide with chapter endings. Probably the weakest aspect is that the expedition never become more than nameless people until they die (if you ever saw the original Star Trek on TV you will understand what I mean by red-shirted cannon-fodder, the character introduced for one episode to die in some unpleasant way). The expedition do not feature as characters to any extent so this is an annoyance rather than a problem and it shouldn't mar your enjoyment. Overall, this was an informative book written in a really enjoyable and entertaining way. The author is trying lots of things to keep the material interesting and some of them don't quite work this is such a fresh and energetic way to tell history that I really look forward to his next book. Very, very good.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great book but let's not exaggerate,
By A Customer
This review is from: A.D. 500: A Journey through the Dark Isles of Britain and Ireland (Hardcover)
I liked this book a lot but I think your other reviewers go a bit over the top. In fact, if Amazon had let me I would have given it four and a half stars. The problem is that Young in describing his trip around Britain uses fairly garish colours to paint the scenery. We hear a lot about the weirder sides of life. But perhaps not enough about real every day living. Still it is a very enjoyable read and the notes at the back are compendious if you want to check up on the facts. I also wondered if sometimes in painting the Britons and Irish as a savage bunch Young was not enjoying himself a bit too much... The best part of the book is without doubt the section on Ireland.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It kept me up all night... NIPPLE SUCKING?!?,
This review is from: A.D. 500: A Journey through the Dark Isles of Britain and Ireland (Hardcover)
My husband got this book on the quiet - it's a review copy don't tell Amazon! He gave it to me thinking it was a novel. Actually it is a novel but all the facts in it are based on historical sources - or so the sources say. It is also written in a really entertaining way. I laughed out loud about four times. Lots of amazing fact about Dark Age Britain and Ireland including the dreadful Irish nipple suckers and the professional farters and the dodgy Anglo-Saxon riddle tellers. My mistake was to start reading this on Monday evening. I should have waited for the weekend as I only got to sleep about five! Really, really good. My only criticism would be that some of the maps were not very clear.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
