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Review
Great Tales: Cheddar Man to the Peasant's Revolt: 'It reads easily and deliciously, and deserves a wide audience. Lacey is a serious historian' David McLaurin, TABLET 'Beautifully written, full of things you didn't know, and well worth a read if you want a new view on stories you though you already understood' - LIVING HISTORY 'A great introduction to history and legend for children and adults who've forgotten' OBSERVER
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
The third volume of the dramatic story of England, from ancient times to modern, by the No. 1 bestselling author of THE YEAR 1000
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a delightful book. A book to read curled up in front of the fire on a cold winter's day. A lovely book to hold and weigh in your hands. But be warned. It is a book to ration - no more than one or two short chapters at a time - and it will have you ransacking your bookshelves to chase up more information or scouring your local library for more detailed works. Any book that kindles or reawakens a passion for English history is a treasure. And this book, along with the first volume in the series, does just that. Not only does Robert Lacey keep each tale sufficiently brief for his readers to keep track of the larger plot but, by cramming so much information into just a few paragraphs, he makes us feel we have a good grasp of what each topic is all about. Yet at the same time he leaves us asking for more. And that is where the list of references, especially the details of the latest websites, is particularly helpful. Like me, Lacey is not an academic and I cannot guarantee the quality of his scholarship (I thought the legend of Thomas More's private jail was now considered apocryphal). But the book is convincing as an honest attempt at telling the truth as the best of today's historians currently understand it. It is a book I can heartedly recommend.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It is only after buying and reading this book that I realized that it is one of a series covering different time periods of English history. So my first comment is that this book can be read and enjoyed independently of the other volumes. In fact I found this book just the kind of bedtime reading I like, and I will be buying the other volumes in the near future. The book consists of 60 short stories, each 3-5 pages long, ranging from John Locke (1690), though Brunel (1843), to Crick and Watson (1953). As I read through the initial tales my first impression was that they were a little too concise and did not include sufficient context to appreciate fully the story being told. However as I approached the Spinning Jenny (1766) and Ned Ludd (1812) I realized what the problem was. My long forgotten school education had more or less jumped from the Romans and Viking straight into the 1800's, leaving a big gap of ignorance in the middle. Thus I found it far easier to situate the tales dating from 1760-70 in the context of my (admittedly still limited) knowledge of English history. Here is the strength of the book, and lets drop the "great" and employ the more useful "entertaining", it brings a bit of life to what many people (including myself) see as a rather dry and dusty subject. The tales can be read as nothing more than interesting snippets about the past. The style of writing is uncomplicated and light, yet each tale is rich and enjoyable. However the book also does a really good job in wetting the reader's appetite for more, and in this context the 20 pages of "bibliography and source notes" are a very welcome addition (the Web addresses are also appreciated).
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I enjoyed Lacey's first volume, which took us from Cheddar Man to The Peasants Revolt, and hoped that this second volume would be as entertaining. Lacey uses the same readable and anecdotal style, but perhaps it is because I am more familiar with late medieval and early modern history that I didn't enjoy this as much as the first volume. Events are not really studied in depth, which is not always helpful when events, and those of the Wars of the Roses in particular, are so complex. It didn't bode well when the Plantagenet family tree at the beginning of the book had the rose emblems the wrong way around! Not a bad starting point if your history is sketchy though!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great Tales From English History, Battle of the Boyne to DNA, Robert...
This is an enjoyable book, which is guaranteed to get people interested in history. Very much like Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples", Lacey sets out to tell... Read more
Published on 3 Jan 2010 by Victor
SIMPLIFIED INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH HISTORY TO 1953
ROBERT LACEY NOW HAS WRITTEN THREE VOLUMES ON ENGLISH HISTORY WHICH WILL BE VERY USEFUL FOR A BASIC INTRODUCTION TO OUR LONG HISTORY FOR THOSE WHO HAVE VERY LITTLE KNOWLEDGE OF... Read more
Published on 9 Aug 2009 by Rev. Thomas G. Chapman
Go on! Buy it!!
Having read the other books in Mr Lacey's series I thoroughly enjoyed picking this one up.
Once again he manages to present the historical dry facts in a manner which... Read more
Once again he manages to present the historical dry facts in a manner which... Read more
Published on 27 Mar 2007 by S. D. Hutt
Accessible history
I first discovered Robert Lacey as an author from his book 'The Year 1000'. Interesting, accessible, easy to follow, with a good balance of detail and breadth (always a tricky task... Read more
Published on 12 Sep 2005 by Kurt Messick
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