history, non-fiction ( )

There is such a massive amount of content covered that you can't completely fault Schama for sounding a bit exhausted. In fact, he is so fatigued that he is assured, at times, that you must be as well. He takes a complete pass of the War of the Roses and the associated monarchs with the notion that you either love this kind of thing or it's all an historical blur of tedious royal machinations and intrigue. And it's not as if we're in disagreement here. It's just the tone that seems off. If you're decided to take a go at being the teller of Britannia's tales then have at it.

As an American, there are also bits missing. The "we all know this guy" trend runs throughout the book. By this point in my waddle through English history I'm better off than the average Yank, but that isn't saying much.

Schama is hugely talented. This just doesn't feel like his book. His voice bubbles up occasionally when he brings in the stories that color in the detail. When he's present and interested the reader is sucked in and finds that the heavy book is worth the holding. All too often though it reads roughly like one of my 3rd grade history reports "this happened... and then they did this... and this guy fought with this guy... and this guy died but he had kids... then there his kids fought with each other... and there was some church stuff."

I'm going to give the second book a go, despite this first outing. I always liked Godfather 2 better anyway. To the mattresses!

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This is an excellent overview. Of course, as some have noted, it gives scant treatment to many important dimensions. How could it not, with this scope? But its selection of what to focus on is astute, and well executed, as in its treatment of the Plague, both as experienced and in its impact. (For instance, the Plague acted to fortify and grow a middle class due to the resulting scarcity, and bid-up value, of labor.) And it carefully deconstructs and re-examines tropes that were otherwise inexplicable or mere clichés, like the notion of Henry VIII as cartoon hedonist, or the puzzling incident of Becket's murder. The writing is outstanding, and the book is both enjoyable and edifying. On to Vol. 2. ( )

I was disappointed with this book. I acquired it years ago when it was first published and was featured on seemingly every popular history book list at the time. It's been sitting on my shelf ever since and I thought it high time I read it.

I wasn't missing much all these years.

On the plus side, it's an easy read - big print, glossy pages, lots of full-color images. In fact, I'm tempted to classify this as a coffee table book of British history, as opposed to any serious academic venture. It's a broad-strokes history of the English peoples from pre-Roman times through the death of Elizabeth I.

Being a quasi-coffee table book, I'd like to say that it functions well as an introductory history of Britain, but in that regard it's not quite broad-strokes enough. It's obviously written for an English audience (it's a companion work to the the television miniseries the author produced for the BBC) and it presumes a basic knowledge of British history already possessed by the reader. The author occasionally mentions people and events without any explanation of who or what they are - it's apparent that the reader is already supposed to know about these things. For American readers such as myself, who weren't taught British history in primary school, it leaves one at a bit of a loss.

This might also explain my confusion over the grandiose historio-philosophical statement with which he begins the book, in the author's introduction. He makes it clear that his intention was to present a history of Britain which falls neither into the jingoistic tradition of historical British unity, nor into the reaction against that tradition which stresses historical upset and discord.

I have no sense of whether or not the author succeeded in writing a new kind of history of Britain. Being a reader who is not a product of, nor directly familiar with, the aforementioned historical tradition and its attendant anti-establishment elements, I can't say if his desired balance was achieved.

I can say that this was an awfully underwhelming book, for having such an over-inflated goal.

Finally, and despite being a quasi-coffee table book of British history, I was put off by the complete lack of citations and foot/end notes in the text. At the end of the book there's both a bibliography of primary sources, and one of secondary sources listed by chapter - but that doesn't tell me specifically which sources were cited where. That goes against everything I've ever been taught about the requirements of scholarly writing and makes it difficult for me to take this book seriously as a sufficiently academic work. ( )

Simon Schama has a very particular style of writing, which is pretty casual and light for a historian. His insights are not always the accepted ones you may have come across before. All this makes for an interesting read. What I found more difficult to get used to was the tendency to focus on specific topics with a great deal of the surrounding events by contrast out of focus. I can't help but believe this makes for a good television script and a slightly odd book. Enjoyable though. ( )