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indieninja92's review against another edition
5.0
Goes at a cracking pace and is very well told. I'd originally got it from the library just to fall asleep to, but it was so interesting I kept staying up to listen! I don't think I've retained anything I learnt, but that's more because of listening to it in audio instead of reading it.
dm81's review against another edition
4.0
Listened to the audiobook.
Really entertaining history book. Sometimes I felt it focused a bit too much on royalty and there was barely anything about the lives of the common folk, but as a broad history it was great. The writer is often able to capture the essence of a figure or an event with brevity and wit, that made for a very enjoyable read.
Really entertaining history book. Sometimes I felt it focused a bit too much on royalty and there was barely anything about the lives of the common folk, but as a broad history it was great. The writer is often able to capture the essence of a figure or an event with brevity and wit, that made for a very enjoyable read.
readon25_'s review against another edition
5.0
stunning with fascinating revelations about Reform and the Elizabethan Age. I will go back and read it over and over...excellent!
alisonconner's review against another edition
4.0
Listened. Covers a lot of ground, but manages to make complex historical events interesting and insightful. Very well read, and kept my interest throughout. On to part two....
titus_hjelm's review against another edition
2.0
Has anyone ever asked if dynastic history really is the only approach the so-called trade audience is interested in reading? This History of Britain is 98% kings and queens with only a stray line dedicated to the mass of the people populating the British isles. There’s nothing wrong with the prose as such—if the royal approach is your cup of tea—but somehow I imagined that 20 years into 21st century even popular historians would recognise the limits of this kind of elite history. Overall, this doesn’t feel like a very ambitious project at all, somewhat surprisingly, from Schama.
odbasford's review against another edition
3.0
I certainly love Schama’s voice, but the book begins with way too much sauce and mid-way dries right up—the last hundred pages is a slog of names and places with little connective tissue. I am very interested in the topic (my ancestry lies somewhere between the Welsh and Normans) and appreciated the survey of every monarch from Alfred onwards. Unfortunately, I feel like the chapters tended to lose their themes in the details, while simultaneously leaving out large swaths of historical topics. I hadn’t intended on reading the rest of the series and I’m even less inclined nuts!