A History of Britain 3: 1776-2000 - The Fate of Empire: Fate of Empire; 1776-2001 Vol 3 [Paperback]

I don't like glossy coffee-table books because of their physical nature. If you like to read lying down they are a bind: lie on your back and they make your arms sore in a way no paperback does; lie on your side and their waxy pages catch and reflect the light. *And* you have to swap sides every time you turn the page.

But for Simon Schama I'll make an exception. This is not just a paperback text with glossy pictures stuck on and a tenner added to the price. It is - please forgive the terrible nineties expression - an 'experience'.

This particular period of history is not, perhaps, as interesting as the centuries covered in the earlier volumes. After the excitement of the Napoleonic wars and their aftermath the narrative becomes less incident-packed and more focussed on social history. That I find this less interesting than the battles and religious strife that went before says more about me than it does about Schama. His prose pleasantly complements the photos and illustrations. He might not thank me for saying it, but he gives history a pleasing sense of narrative such as we non-academic dabblers need to keep us entertained.

So, a good purchase, especially if you're buying someone a present, or you're after a handsome volume to sit on your living room bookshelf. If you actually want to learn about the period this is a good introduction. However Schama is generally uncontroversial and readers already familiar with the material won't find much that's new.

Just be prepared to sit at a table to read it. Or maybe you want to beef up those biceps?

Let me start off this review by saying that I am a great admirer of Mr. Schama. I have read "Citizens", "Landscape And Memory" and "Rembrandt's Eyes" and thought they were all wonderful. I would give all of those books a 5 star rating. So, what happened here? I think what happened was that Mr. Schama was being pulled in 2 different directions. This book is meant to accompany the television programs that the author is hosting for the BBC. Instead of just writing whatever book he might ordinarily have written, I think Mr. Schama was hindered by the restrictions the TV format placed on him. For the TV shows he had to come up with various "hooks", a few well-known personalities that would help him illustrate whatever point or points he was trying to make at that place in the narrative. Additionally, the television format required Mr. Schama to be ruthlessly selective in what he chose to include or exclude. There just isn't the time to put in everything that you'd like to. These requirements distort the writing process. Mr. Schama is aware of the problem and addresses it in the preface to the book. But this "preemptive strike", this acknowledgement by the author that he is aware of the problem, doesn't make the problem go away. The author is such a good historian, and such a good writer, that this book is still well-worth reading. Mr. Schama has pulled out, like rabbits from a hat, some interesting tales of little-known historical figures. Here we have Thomas Day, a great believer in the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "...Day...believed in the inter-connectedness of all created life and was therefore a vegetarian...Would he want to treat all creatures with the same consideration, asked a sardonic lawyer friend, even spiders? Would he not want to kill them? 'No,' answered Day, 'I don't know that I have a right. Suppose that a superior being said to a companion- "Kill that lawyer." How should you like it? And a lawyer is more noxious to most people than a spider.'....(Day's) peculiar life ended abruptly in September 1789 in his 42nd year, during an experiment to test his pet theories about taming horses with gentleness rather than breaking them. An unbroken colt he was riding failed to respond to the tender touch, and threw Day on his head." The book is filled with nice touches like this. There are many entertaining anecdotes about the well-known, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Queen Victoria, George Orwell, Winston Churchill, etc.....and the not-so-well-known, such as Mr. Day. This provides a counterbalance to the heavyweight material....for example, the intricacies of British politics (Pitt vs. Fox; Gladstone vs. Disraeli; Labour vs. Liberal vs. Conservative); the big-issues (home-rule for Ireland, Scotland and Wales; women's suffrage; the Raj; industrialization; the gap between rich and poor, etc.). But, despite the quality of both Mr. Schama's thinking and writing, in the end we feel strangely unsatisfied. There are flashes of brilliance but also many areas of darkness. Too much has been left out. Despite what you might have anticipated by the book starting with 1776, there is nothing here concerning the American Revolution; a handful of pages concerning the 20 year struggle against Napoleonic France; no mention of the War Of 1812; virtually nothing on the Crimean and Boer Wars, or WWI; nothing on the relationship between Britain and South Africa, or Britain and Canada, or Britain and Australia/New Zealand, etc.; and, surprisingly, considering Mr. Schama's wide-ranging interests, except for mentioning some writers, there is very little cultural history contained in these pages- nothing about art, music, dance, architecture, etc.; and almost no mention of scientific and technological achievements. So, if you are a fan of Mr. Schama, read this book for the beautiful prose and for the author's always interesting insights concerning the areas he has chosen to cover. But, if you are looking for a detailed, all-inclusive history of Great Britain- you will need to look elsewhere.

The final volume of the 3-book series is as beautifully packaged and illustrated as the previous volumes and Schama'a narrative is as splendid as ever. Like the T.V. series, this third volume is a little annoying in the fact that Schama is obsessed with the arts to the detriment of the sciences. This is certainly a unique view on British history, such as the over-emphasis on the French Revolution in the first section, and many great characters such as Brunel have little to play in Schama's view of events. Schama seems intent on celebrating more obscure people at the expense of the more mundane. (I.e. No Nelson, Drake, Dickens is less significant a writer than Gaskilll, etc.)The chapters on the British Empire show Schama willing to trot out old cliches, something he intended not to do in his Preface in Volume 1. Here, the reader would be better directed to Niall Ferguson's excellent book where Schama's weaknesses become more apparent. There is plenty to read on the build-up to WW 2 but the actual conflict is almost mentioned in passing. WW1 gets even less attention.
I really enjoyed Volume 1 and felt that the author dealt with Medieval History in a clear, concise and witty manner. Volume 2 is the least interesting as Schama spent too much time dealing with constitutional issues. However, Volume 3 is too eccentric to be considered authoritive and is content to reduce the last 50 years to a few pages.
As a whole, the series is ambitious but Schama is too controversial in the emphasis he gives his different subjects. Norman Davies' book is also an interesting read, but ,equally not authorative, although more detailed. Readers interested in Pre-history will be disappointed by both books.