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cmbhusker's review against another edition
5.0
This book is not for everyone, but for those whom it's for, it's phenomenal. It's DENSE - I worked on this one most nights before bed, and it still took me a month to read it. As with other books in this series, Mortimer offers an exhaustive dive into the minutiae of everyday life of his chosen time period. The Restoration period is not one I was terribly familiar with, making this a book that taught me a lot. He also introduced the intriguing thought that he has something like 1500 ancestors who would have been alive at this time. As I'm half British, it was sort of startling to think of this history this way--that literally hundreds of my ancestors were living the life he describes in the places he describes it.
If you're not looking for exhaustive detail--think, what kinds of coins did people use, and how was farmland divided, and what did houses look like in different parts of London--this is not for you. But if you want to get as close to understanding the warp and weft of life in a different time period in England, you can't do better than this book.
My favorite part, and a feature that is actually really difficult to pull off, is Mortimer's humor. It can be hard to work humor into historical writing and not come off like you are ridiculing your subjects, but Mortimer manages to draw out the humor of some of what he finds without belittling the people he's explaining.
His next book is on Regency England, and I'm SO excited!
If you're not looking for exhaustive detail--think, what kinds of coins did people use, and how was farmland divided, and what did houses look like in different parts of London--this is not for you. But if you want to get as close to understanding the warp and weft of life in a different time period in England, you can't do better than this book.
My favorite part, and a feature that is actually really difficult to pull off, is Mortimer's humor. It can be hard to work humor into historical writing and not come off like you are ridiculing your subjects, but Mortimer manages to draw out the humor of some of what he finds without belittling the people he's explaining.
His next book is on Regency England, and I'm SO excited!
izzyhallow's review against another edition
Was interesting to learn for a while but just got information overload and decided to move on to something else
lydia123's review against another edition
slow-paced
1.0
It was very informational, but there were several points where it made me remember why I avoid reading male historians.
‘all the negative things you’ve heard about people in this chapter: the superstitions, the witchcraft, the religious hatred, xenophobia, violence, and creulty - might leave you with the impression that the British are a horrible, prickly, narrow-minded, selfish bunch - ONLY THE RAPES SOUND ANY FUN.’
Hmmm.
‘all the negative things you’ve heard about people in this chapter: the superstitions, the witchcraft, the religious hatred, xenophobia, violence, and creulty - might leave you with the impression that the British are a horrible, prickly, narrow-minded, selfish bunch - ONLY THE RAPES SOUND ANY FUN.’
Hmmm.