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A Short History Of England (2011)

by Simon Jenkins(Favorite Author)

3.72 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1846684633 (ISBN13: 9781846684630)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Profile Books Ltd

review 1: Memories of what I learnt back at school are coming back. It took an overdose of names and dates dropping administered by this book. But what I found most interesting are the anecdotes that never make it into history books... - 1337-1453: Hundred Years' War. The French used canons while archery was critical to the English, so much in fact that King Edward banned all other sports including football for his fellow Englishmen to solely concentrate on archery. However, what Edward did not prepare for is battlefield dysentery: the 'Black Death' reduced the English population from 5.5m to 4m, the largest drop in history. - The book keeps referring to Shakespeare's 'deformation' of English history e.g. as in his work on Richard III (1452-1485). But what matters is that the darkn... moreess of the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth ('the greatest ruler in English history', 1533-1603) was illuminated by Shakespeare's dramatic genius. And his plays have been played in London theaters ever since. - By 1730, there was a gin shop for every 11 dwellings in London. Gin was so cheap that you could get drunk for a penny and drop dead for two... until the 1736 Gin Act was voted and the sale of gin started being taxed. - England's Second Hundred Years' War with France (1689-1815) was only over when Napoleon Bonaparte died on the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena in 1821. All up, war with France lasted 400 years, but this didn't prevent me getting the UK citizenship a few years ago. Revenge is a dish best served cold. - Queen Victoria (1819-1901) and Albert enjoyed a matrimonial bliss, sharing their time between Windsor, Balmoral and Osbourne, on the Isle of Wight. Albert got a Swiss cottage constructed there... Swiss cottages blossomed around the country as a result, including one in London, near South Hampstead. I used to live in the area before heading for Australia and the oddity of a Swiss cottage in central London finally makes sense to me. - 11/11/1918 is Armistice Day or 'Poppy Day', as named after the flowers that grew over the trenches, as if they were coloured by the blood of the Fallen. - The UK refused to sign the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The country wanted to remain independent. But in 1963 and 1967, they wanted to join the party after all but this time, it was De Gaulle's turn to say 'NON'. The swinging sixties at their best... - Come the 80 and 90's, and London was becoming more like New York, a city that never sleeps... helped by Thatcherism. Thatcher was relentless: she was going to bed late, rising early after 4 hours' sleep to head to Downing Street. The Tories were nicknamed the 'nasty party' for a reason, going as far as to say there was no such thing as 'society'. This is rather ironic because if England has been a success as a country, it's mostly because of the openness of English society as a whole. - The 'Naughties' (2000-2009) were marked by the Blair style and the New Labour. But security became an obsession for 'Cool Britannia' after the terrorist attacks in London (July 2005). Later, the GFC officially started with the market crash in autumn 2008. And bankers joined politicians as the most unloved people, with uninterrupted banker bashing ever since. This is not surprising coming from a country which has often been at war with itself... 'If you are not at peace with your friends, be at war with them', the saying goes. To conclude: this is a well documented book, with a political history expertly told. The only thing missing is passion, but maybe, just maybe this is by design, and to stay true to the English style. 'Would you like a cup of tea my dear?'. Overall, I give this book a rating of 3 out of 5. It's not really literature, only a good school manual.
review 2: Few mention the indigenous British Tribes such as the Iceni and Trinovantes who were all exterminated. With only a few Celts left on the Post-Roman east coast to eradicate things developed in a Germanic vein in England. This book gives you a very serviceable timeline of English History, which is why I read it. However I only gave it four stars because a lot of people could have done this just as well (the story is not that boring). Reading English history reminds you how terrible being drawn and quartered must have been. Yeech! It also reminds me of the continual moral drag in those days of having to be victorious in battle against your neighbors to stay in power and help your people. King Edward even banned soccer for a while so the English would concentrate only on archery. There’s an amazing Jenkins fact that 100 English archers once took out 10,000 Frenchmen in battle – that’s sustained firepower. Bows fire 10 arrows per minute versus 2 a minute for a crossbow. Every weird little name you’ve always heard like Agincourt, Aragon, Bolingbroke, Cromwell, Disraeli, Gladstone, and the Glorious Revolution are explained in this book. Today we are concerned in the US with overreaching state security and dissent never being seen as treason; back then the Church of England was the state and ANY other view was simply treason. Growing wool becomes critical to England’s economy. Kings move from center stage. William Pitt in the mid-18th century says this great thing: it is “dangerous to our liberties and destructive to our trade to encourage great numbers of our people to depend for their livelihood upon the profession of arms”. Meanwhile, today in America we say yes to every war our two business parties dream up and every state of our union is firmly in the killing business with lucrative military contracts assuring William Pitt’s concerns are never taken seriously. British slavery ends. Old British cathedral cities soon competed with the new industrial cities. 1832 the British re-distribution of power occurs with the Reform Act becoming law. 1848 is the toppling of the Monarchies. Soon John Stuart Mill says man can also cause evil through his inactions; but capitalists had already realized that violence abroad and repression at home also creates whopping profits! So American Mass Media later decides to translate that as “consciously keep Americans glued to the tube on their couches and we can create tons of money due to their inaction to violence around the world generated by the state in their name to generate profit.” Belgium is created in 1831. In World War I, more officers died than enlisted men because officers were supposed to lead the charges. Chamberlin is known today as the great appeaser yet his own staff was telling him Britain was in no way ready for battle and the press was strangely for dictators so what was he realistically to do? WWII Rocket attacks were known to be inaccurate so they largely had only terror effect. Strangely, Germany and Japan actively brought Russia and US into WWII knowing that they were well capable of destroying both countries. Great book, very interesting to read, however I have no reason to think it is any better than other one volume British Histories. less

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