A History of Britain, Vol 1: At the Edge of the World: 3000BC-AD1603 - Hardcover

Schama CBE, Simon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0563384972 ISBN 13: 9780563384977

Publisher: BBC Books, 2000

Synopsis

'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.

About this title

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

"Schama has a masterly ability to conjure up character and vivify conflict." (Ben Rogers Financial Times)

"He remains a master storyteller, admirably and sceptically well read in current revisionist histories, and a wonderful guide to a new history of Britain." (The Times)

"A History of Britain, its text supplemented by wonderful illustrations, affords the rare joy of witnessing a scholar at the peak of his powers convincing the reader that he has a cracking good tale to tell and that he is loving every minute of the telling." (Literary Review)

"Popular history at its finest." (Sunday Express)

"Simon Schama's A History of Britain is far more than the book of the TV series... The book is far richer and fuller, covering a huge span so economically that there is room for plenty of arresting detail... It is the sort of vivid history that keeps you awake." (Peter Lewis Daily Mail)

About this edition

• Publisher: BBC Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0563384972
• ISBN 13: 9780563384977
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416