English History Made Brief, Irreverent, and Pleasurable

De: Lacey Baldwin Smith

Narrado por: Peter Noble

Here at last is a history of England that is designed to entertain as well as inform and that will delight the armchair traveler, the tourist, or just about anyone interested in history.

No people have engendered quite so much acclaim or earned so much censure as the English: extolled as the Athenians of modern times, yet hammered for their self-satisfaction and hypocrisy. But their history has been a spectacular one.

The guiding principle of this book's heretical approach is that "history is not everything that happened but what is worth remembering about the past". Thus its chapters deal mainly with "Memorable History" in blocks of time over the centuries. The final chapter, "The Royal Soap Opera", recounts the achievements, personalities, and idiocies of the royal family since the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066. English History will be a welcome and amusing tour of a land that has always fascinated Anglophiles and Anglophobes alike.

©2007 Lacey Baldwin Smith (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

Wonderful!

I loved this book. Nicely read. it gives the highlights of every period of English history in a most entertaining way. It will also be enjoyable to listen to again and again.

enjoyable funny and objective

i throughly enjoyed listening English History. Author clearly has a command of every detail and its impact on greater things. i learned a great deal about English history but I took great personal lessons from the success a d failures and causes and effects of kings and queens. wonderfully written book i highly recommend anyone any age

Worth listening to!!

I love history. Am very familiar with the history of Great Britain. In order to fully enjoy this book and follow it, I recommend that you are familiar with history. I absolutely recommend this book. The narrator was excellent.

Enjoyable!

Not without its own biases, this book is as good a manageable guide through incredibly complex (to an American, anyhow!) British history. Much is left out or skimmed over, as is necessary for a single book, but there is enough substance to tweak more research, challenge opinions, and incite debate. (I DO NOT LIKE the misogynist way Eliz I and Victoria are dismissed. Alas, I still cannot recite the names of all the British monarchs.

He ate, drank and wenched himself to death.

Don't let the book cover or the title fool you. It's more than a Cliff's Notes version of English history, but not overly granular.
.
.
Like many Americans, my knowledge of British/English/United Kingdom history was limited to 3 sentences prior to 1650 AD. Following 1700, we fought 2 wars against England. 100 years later, we allied with them to save Europe, twice. At the end of World War Two, the world watched England downsize.
.
.
So, what did I learn? The Romans brought their civilizing ways to Britain. Roads, baths, architecture and civilian government. They were unable to tame the Scots, so they built and manned a wall, to keep the Scots out. They went to Ireland, but, found the Irish, Celts, to be as wild as the Scots and let the sea serve as a natural barrier.
.
.
(This is not covered in this book. The fall of Rome allowed the Norse people to move Southwest, into the British Isles, West to Iceland and Greenland and South, into central and southern Europe. The Norsemen generally were in Britain after the fall of Rome.)
.
.
So, what did I learn? The British archipelago was frequently visited by the Scandinavians. The Scandinavians had on and off settlements and used it as a way station to Iceland and Greenland. Why is this important? If it weren't for the Norsemen, Led Zeppelin would not have written the "Immigrant Song". On their third album, Led Zeppelin III, they wrote a song about early Norse visitors to Britain. I've listened to LZ since they started selling albums. I never made the connection, until Joel Veitch put out a video, featuring the Viking Kittens, singing the "Immigrant Song". It all turned into a copyright brouhaha, which is too bad. I think the people in LZ and Mr. Veitch could have worked together and made this work.
.
.
What else did I learn? Why the English and French were at war, on and off for 700 years. I came to the conclusion it was a bad marriage, culminating in a seven centuries divorce. As it turns out, Northern France, Normandy, was ceded to the Vikings, in an effort to keep them out of the rest of France. As the Vikings traveled between England and France, they mixed and mated with the locals, such that, the ruling families were typically cousins. A familial dynastic that continued into the 20th Century.
.
.
There is a brief rundown of the Royal Family and it's progenitors. About half are good, the other half, not so much. I would think the English do not find it easy to keep them all straight, so, if you can't, don't worry. There is a description of the class system. Most historians would say England began to lag behind the world, after their rocketing head start at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, by resting on their laurels. The wealthy industrialists sent their sons to the best schools. However, there is little evidence the best schools made them the best prepared. They finished school, having mastered a distinguishing characteristic, the presence of ''effortless superiority.''
.
.
Overall, I think this would be on the shortlist of sources to begin learning about English history. The author explains the differences between England, Britain and the United Kingdom. There is a brief discussion on the English currency. The English measure of weight, when not in kilograms, can be measured in "stone". 14 pounds is 1 Stone. I've only seen this when movie stars gain or lose a lot of weight. "She's lost 15 stone. She looks fantastic."

Good cheeky overview of English history

Certainly not a deep dive, but a quick and entertaining listen. I accompanied it with plenty of Wikipedia research and feel like I have a good understanding of how we got to today.

Excellent and English

The author is great at summarizing in brief chapters and with British humor, the history of a mesmerizing country. It is great to understand better their culture and the reason they conquered the world.

Wonderfully interesting

This was both interesting and entertaining.
It was filled with information I hadn't known.
It did move quickly and I plan to listen to it again in order to remember more of the facts I hadn't known.
The narrator did an excellent job and presented surprising tidbits of information in an entertaining manner.
I'd recommend this audiobook to anyone interested in English history.

Concise & excellent

Entertaining summary. Well narrated. A little too much opinion for my taste, but well done.

Excellent book for cocktail conversation

A great book for anyone who wants to either supplement a general understanding of English history. This falls under my category of good for cocktail party conversation. It won’t tell you everything you want to know on any particular subject but gives enough background that you can seem knowledgeable or at least informed on most of the big topics of English history.