Customer Reviews

This Sceptred Isle: Twentieth Century: From the Death of Queen Victoria to the Dawn of a New Millennium

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I missed the audio broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Christopher Lee makes twentieth-century British history easily accessible. The book is organized by year, so the reader doesn't have to start at the beginning. However, I read it from cover-to-cover in just a few days.

In the introduction Lee talks about his own fascination with the stories his grandfather and grand-uncles told him. As I read this book, I pictured my own grandfather as a boy in Victoria's army in India. He lived with us when I was a boy and was full of stories. I imagined the tribulations of my father in the great depression. But to see the geopolitical forces that shaped the British experience is nothing short of amazing.

This book sharpens previously fuzzy perspectives. This is not the only Christopher Lee book I shall read.