Amazon.co.uk Review
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
Review
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.
by Simon Schama
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