Customer Reviews

Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-2000, Second Edition (Penguin History of Britain)

5 star:		(1)
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3 star:		(4)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Contrary to title, this is still very much a conventional political History of England, developments in Scotland and Irelend receiving the barest of mentions and only in connection with English affairs. It's the usual politics first approach, with some snippets of information about leading literary figures, cultural fads and the like. But the information offered is solid, clear and broaches upon all relevant issues. Therefore, a first-class historical handbook, if not very daring in its approach of the subject.

Hope and Glory is a bit much; it delves too much in the personalities of the miriad characters and chases many rabbits down a hole. The detail is excessive to the point of tediousness. That is not to say there is not much useful information and insight to be gained from the book; but it has be be extracted from a morass of less useful and arcane material. The author has a great mastery of the English language, but this PhD found himself reaching for a dictionary far too often. I would recommend it to those who are willing to do some "hard, deep plowing" for serious study only.

Hope and Glory is a largely political history of Britain in the twentieth century. It does have significant portions on the arts, social trends such as the growth of women's paid employment outside the household, and on the economy. I wish to emphasize that my rating is a function of reading the Kindle edition which has a remarkable number of typographical errors, some of which are serious enough so that I had difficulty in figuring out what was meant. Otherwise I enjoyed the book, first written in 1994 but with an updated second edition (which is what I read) covering through the early 21st century.

The author seeks to answer the question of whether or not Britain can be said to have declined in the twentieth century. His answer seems to be that it depends what you mean by decline, and that anyway he thinks some of the decisions that may have contributed to a decline in some sense were justifiable. Britain declined in the sense that at the end of the twentieth century it was no longer Top Nation; its relative political and economic significance were less than it was at the start of the twentieth century. This relative decline was most marked in a political sense, as the United States already had a larger economy (equal roughly to the sum of the gross domestic products of Britain, France and Germany) at the start of the twentieth century. However, individual Britons lived much longer, were much less likely to watch their kids die, and were much wealthier at the end of the twentieth century than at its start. Deciding to continue the war against Germany after the fall of France meant selling off Britain's overseas assets, distorting the economy to focus on weapons production, required a dependence on the United States for finance, and made the loss of the empire inevitable. But coexistence with Hitler hardly seems a probable long-term possibility, and the dependence on the United States was less disasterous than subservience to Hitler. I found the book to be well written.

I earlier published this review at Goodreads.com.

This is one of the best surveys of British history. There is not as much as one would hope on social history, but the political and military history is first rate and well-informed.

This book is a rather good history for the time period covered, but the kindle version is littered with errors, many of which are repeated throughout (lots of random bs added to words, consistently writing the 10 and 11 attached to downing street as a letter). If you are willing to put up with that and a lack of localization in the u.s. (gaol is jail and such) it can be a rewarding if frustrating read.