A History of Britain (Vol 1) At the Edge of the World: 3000BC-AD1603: At the Edge of the World? - 3000 BC-AD 1603 Vol 1 [Paperback]

What do you get when you combine the resources and ethos of the BBC with the literary panache of one of the world's best narrative historians? The answer is Simon Schama's History of Britain, the first volume of which accompanies the BBC television series of the same name.

In a beautifully written and thoughtfully crafted book, studded with striking portraits, pictures and maps, Schama, the bestselling author of books on European cultural history such as The Embarrassment of Riches and Citizens, as well as 1999's Rembrandt's Eyes, has managed to be both conventional and provocative. He tells the official version of Britain's island story--from Roman Britain, through the Norman conquest, the struggles of the Henrys and Richards with their bolshie barons and cautious clerics, Edward I and the subjugation of Wales, King Death (the plague), and on to the Henrician reformation, before closing with the remarkable reign of the virgin queen, Elizabeth I.

While sticking to a script familiar to anyone who sat up and listened in history lessons at school, Schama brings it all alive, with memorable prose--Simon de Montfort's rebel parliament is described as inaugurating the "union between patriotism and insubordination"; with Henry VIII, Schama says, "you could practically smell the testosterone". And with fine sensitivity too, particularly on the symbolism of buildings, memorials, language and ceremonies, and on the complex relations between England and her Celtic and Catholic neighbours. If history must have gloss, then let it be written and presented like this. --Miles Taylor --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Described as an "epic book" by the publishers, this frequently bandied and much devalued term may be, for once, an understatement. Schama seems set to follow his Rembrandt's Eyes success with this book - part archaeology, part social history - and the accompanying 16-part television series, co-produced by the BBC and the History Channel. Writing in an engaging, accessible style and dotted with interesting illustrations, both of which more than balance the sheer bulk of the book, Schama approaches a broad sweep of our nation's history from 3500BC to our modern post-imperial state. He has set out to show that, as much as we have changed over the last 5500 years, much has remained in common between us and our ancestors. A worthy companion book to another of those authorial multi-part series (think Civilisation and The Ascent of Man) that the BBC does so well. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

...a bravura performance by the Lord Macauley of our day. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Schama has a masterly ability to conjure up character and vivify conflict. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Popular history at its finest. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

...excitingly readable. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'History clings tight but it also kicks loose,' writes Simon Schama at the outset of At the Edge of the World?, the first book in his three-volume journey into Britain's past. And change - sometimes gentle and subtle, sometimes shocking and violent - is the dynamic of Schama's unapologetically personal and grippingly written history. At its heart lie questions of compelling importance for Britain's future as well as its past: what makes or breaks a nation? To whom do we give our allegiance and why? And where do the boundaries of our community lie - in our hearth and home, our village or city, tribe or faith? What is Britain - one country or many? Has British history unfolded 'at the edge of the world' or right at the heart of it?

Schama delivers these themes in a form that is at once traditional and excitingly fresh. The great and the wicked are here - Becket and Thomas Cromwell, Robert the Bruce and Anne Boleyn - but so are countless more ordinary lives, depicted in Schama's brilliant portrait of the life of the British people.

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. His publications include Patriots and Liberators, which won the 1989 Yorkshire Post Award for Non-Fiction, Dead Certainties, Landscape Eyes and the History of Britain series. Simon Schama was art critic for the New Yorker from 1995 to 1998, and was awarded a C.B.E. in the 2001 New Year's Honours List.