Britain never had the kind of revolution experienced by France in 1789, but it did come close. In the mid-1770s the country was intoxicated by a great surge of political energy. Re-discovering England's wildernesses, the intellectuals of the "Romantic generation" also discovered the plight of the common man, turning Nature into a revolutionary force. This power of the cult of nature enabled two things - to make man see and explore Britain in a way unimaginable a generation before, and to pit democrat cosmopolitans against patriots. From the politics of wildness, "A History of Britain" moves to the Victorian era and its question of how to create a better world in the face of upheaval. As the Victorian era began, the massive advance of technology and industrialisation was rapidly reshaping both the landscape and the social structure of the whole country. To a much greater extent than ever before women would take a centre stage role in shaping society.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
The third and last part of Simon Schama's highly readable and utterly engaging history of Britain. Like all great narrative historians, Schama is above all else an original prose stylist, fully in command of the evocative language as well as the source materials of historical description. This is also history conceived on a truly grand, epic scale, taking the reader from the Age of Enlightenment and revolutions in political and economic life, right up to Britain's post-imperial twilight at the close of the last century. Another BBC book that will be big at Christmas, not least because the entire 15-part series is to be repeated from September. And as this is the third volume, it is the one that everyone will buy to complete the set.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Over-rated and very conventional,
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This review is from: A History of Britain: Fate of Empire; 1776-2000 v.3 (Vol 3) (Paperback)
Schama presents Britain's history through a series of portraits - Wordsworth, Churchill, Orwell - like a stroll through the gallery of a stately home.He calls Britain 'the nation that had been born from imperial wars and sustained by imperial profits', as if the British people had not created Britain in their own land by their own efforts. This explains why he spends so much time on the empire, run by just tens of thousands of expatriates, and so little on the industrial civilisation built by tens of millions that made Britain the workshop of the world. Yet his chapters on the Empire are useful. He quotes Charles Trevelyan of the treasury, who said that the Irish famine of 1845-49 was "the judgement of God on an indolent and unself-reliant people, and as God had sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated." But the ruling class learnt nothing from this. In 1860 two million Indian people died of famine, in 1866, 800,000, in 1877-8, seven million. "the Government decline to import rice ... If the market favours, imported rice will find its way into Pooree without government interference which can only do harm." The Lancet wrote that India's excess deaths from famine and disease were more than 19 million in the 1890s. Between 1901 and 1905, three million people died of bubonic plague and another three million died of cholera. The British-run Indian government spent just 4% of its revenues on public works like irrigation, and 35% on the army and police. Schama notes that the empire was built on selling drugs. In 1851, 40% of India's exports were opium. As late as 1900-10, opium profits yielded a sixth of the Indian government's revenues. However, Schama's comments on foreign affairs in the last century are obtuse. He writes that Churchill was 'prophetic or optimistic' on Ireland, the Middle East and the blockade of Germany - it would be nice to know which. He thinks that Churchill's 'diagnosis of what had happened in Russia in October 1917 was exactly right'. Schama repeats the old slur that Spain's communists were 'more interested in hunting down heretics like the anarchists than in taking on General Franco's fascists'. He ludicrously calls the USA's 1953 coup against Iran a 'defensive' response to Iran's nationalisation of its oil industry. But he makes a few shrewd comments, writing, "immigrant labour was exploited to drive down wages." He notes that the Conservative politician Harold Macmillan in 1938 proposed abolishing the Stock Exchange. And he concludes, "what post-imperial Britain has going for it is precisely its resistance to the chilly white purism of Euro-nationalism."
5.0 out of 5 stars
educational and entertaining,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: History of Britian: The British Wars 1603 - 1776 Part 1 (Audio CD)
This audiobook is definitely worth it. Simon Schama is a great writer while Timothy West does a great job reading the text. Definitely worth my time and money!
5.0 out of 5 stars
The furnace of British history,
By Sirin (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: History of Britian: The British Wars 1603 - 1776 Part 1 (Audio CD)
After introducing a great sweep of ancient and Medieval history in part 1, Schama tightens the timescale to look at the key wars of the 17th and 18th Centuries that forged and defined the British state. Timothy West reads the stories, and in his sonorous British (well, English) tones he spins a narrative through individual portraits (the signiature Schama style) of the key figures of the period: Charles I, Cromwell, Pepys, Wren, Bonnie Prince Charlie. Schama meshes in the themes of religious upheaval, political reform and revolution and social changes of architecture (the section on St Pauls is excellent) and reform in the 18th Century - vignettes such as Thomas Coram and the foundling hospital.The narrative style mixed with literature gets under the skin of the period excellently. For example one can almost feel like one is in the London tavern with Tobias Smolett after the smiting of the Jacobite cause at Culloden as he reflects on how Britain can call itself a nation now. The best of the 3 part CD adaptation of Schama's book.
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