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History Of Britain 1 At The Edge World Paperback – October 1, 2009

by Simon Schama (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 454 ratings
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Change - sometimes gentle and subtle, sometimes shocking and violent - is the dynamic of Simon Schama's unapologetically personal and grippingly written history of Britain, especially the changes that wash over custom and habit, transforming our loyalties.

What makes or breaks a nation? To whom do we give our allegiance and why? And where do the boundaries of our community lie - in our hearth and home, our village or city, tribe or faith? What is Britain - one country or many? Has British history unfolded 'at the edge of the world' or right at the heart of it?

Schama delivers these themes in a form that is at once traditional and excitingly fresh. The great and the wicked are here - Becket and Thomas Cromwell, Robert the Bruce and Anne Boleyn - but so are countless more ordinary lives: an Irish monk waiting for the plague to kill him in his cell at Kilkenny; a small boy running through the streets of London to catch a glimpse of Elizabeth I.

The first in a series, this volume paints a rich and vivid portrait of the life of the British people and their nation.

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Previous page
  1. Book 1 of 3
    A History of Britain
  2. Print length
    352 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Bodley Head
  5. Publication date
    October 1, 2009
  6. Dimensions
    6.02 x 1.06 x 9.21 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1847920128
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1847920126
  9. See all details
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  1. History of Britain, A - Volume III: The Fate of the Empire 1776 - 2000
  2. The English and Their History
  3. The Oxford History of Britain: 2021 edition
  4. The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066
  5. Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I (The History of England, 2)
  6. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bodley Head (October 1, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1847920128
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1847920126
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.09 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.02 x 1.06 x 9.21 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 454 ratings

About the author

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Simon Schama

Simon Schama

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Simon Schama is a professor of art history and history at Columbia University, and is the author of numerous award-winning books; his most recent history, Rough Crossings, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. He is a cultural essayist for the New Yorker and has written and presented more than thirty documentaries for the BBC, PBS, and the History Channel, including The Power of Art, which won the 2007 International Emmy for Best Arts Programming.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
454 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Adington
5.0 out of 5 stars The History of Britain Book to Start With
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2015
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If seeking a vigorous first exposure to the history of Britain or a lubrication of lessons once learned and long rusted, Simon Schama’s “A History of Britain Volume 1” is the book you’ll want by your side.

Though taking British history from 3000BC to AD1603 in this first volume, by its first 100 pages Schama provides the most robust coverage of pre-history to the crowning of William the Conqueror I’ve ever seen.

Where authors like Peter Ackroyd in “Foundation” and of recent note, Robert Tombs, in his massive “The English and their History” have attempted similar introductions, Schama pulls off what these others have failed. (Ackroyd offers no maps with scant context; Tombs believes he can meaningfully take readers from whoa to the Norman Conquest in just 20 pages – he can’t.)

The novice to British history will want to ask: Who were the first British? How were they organized? Why did the Romans invade? Why the Anglo-Saxons? Why then the Vikings? Who was Alfred the Great? Who was Edward the Confessor? What made William finally cross the Normandy shore? And what then? For these underscore the “British” story thereafter.

So Schama takes the reader’s hand, and replete with narrative, humor, opinion and chronological flow provides meaningful answers to each concern.

But there is a word of warning. To appreciate Schama’s thoroughness, readers need to prepare for a solid read: the secret to Schama’s story telling is his magnificent economy with words. Narrative twists and crescendos are at times found mid-paragraph – and Schama extrudes his paragraphs into elongated strings of thought. Blink and you may miss something. It takes a little time to adjust to this writing style – but once you do the pages flow, and you begin to appreciate a total absence of fluff, filler or repetition. It soon explains why the volumes in the series each run just 350 pages approximately – and why so much detail can be offered in such little space.

Further, many will also appreciate Schama’s almost deliberate shying from nomenclature, and academic pretentiousness. His aim is to teach – and to me, he succeeds.

The beauty of history is in the detail. And once the basics are tucked away (and remember that no matter the source, history – especially that of Britain – is a tale of names, family trees and places), you will want to flesh out eras of interest: and when you do you may come across information omitted or treated pithily in this book. That is the game we play whenever “introductory” texts are studied.

The danger, however, is wasting money on books that cut their stories too fine. With Simon Schama’s “A History of Britain volume 1”, you’ll not find this the case.
20 people found this helpful
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Stephen M. Kerwick
5.0 out of 5 stars Eminently Readable Work by a Serious Scholar
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2001
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The overlap between excellent scholarship and exceptional readability in today's history writing is exceedingly slim. Schama's History of Britain is as good an example as the market holds today. While it obviously doesn't treat the subject area in the same depth as his his texts on Dutch and French subjects or on Art history, the area covered here is immense. From my standpoint, Prof. Schama performs a herculean task simply to distill the material into such a usable and enjoyable work. I am quite hard pressed to think of a another such work of excellent writing on a large subject area other than Shelby Foote's Civil War volumes, which seem somewhat comparable in every positive respect. Additionally, one can open A History of Britain and read with enjoyment at almost any point and for any period of time. The characterization of key players matches that of the best novels and Schama's writing compares favorably to a somewhat similar work, Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples. I recommend disregarding the less favorable reviews following as unfair in perspective. The combination of a powerful scholar of Simon Schama's caliber with such graceful writing is almost unheard of and the alternative of tedious fact recitation is no choice at all. This is a book to purchase twice, once for yourself and again as a gift for a good friend.
62 people found this helpful
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James Yanni
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, not great; thorough, not definitive.
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2009
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This is a well-written, well-researched book. It succeeds in avoiding the trap that many historians fall into of mistaking a neutral tone with a boring one; the author frequently injects a note of wry humor by a turn of phrase that will catch the reader somewhat off-guard: "But although the poets and balladeers sang her praises as if she were a goddess, Elizabeth I was only too obviously made of flesh and blood. She was vain, arrogant, spiteful, bloody-minded, frequently unjust and even more frequently maddeningly indecisive: an authentic Tudor, in other words.", as an example from the final chapter. On the down side, as other reviewers have pointed out, very little attention was paid to any history OTHER than that of the succession of Kings and Queens; the book is titled "The History of Britain", not "The Kings and Queens of Britain". (That's another book entirely.) On the other hand, it failed to provide what I had hoped for, based on the dates in the title: I had hoped to find a good history of the pre-conquest kings, and found almost nothing about them; just a few mentions in chapter one. By chapter 2, we were already on to the Conquest, and never looked back. So my complaint about this book, and the reason it only gets four stars rather than five, is that it at once pays too much, AND too little, attention to the litany of Kings.
11 people found this helpful
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Katherine Miller
5.0 out of 5 stars Infinite wit and understanding of Britain's history
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2014
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Although the reader must bring considerable understanding and information
about the history of Britain to this text (not a text for beginners) it is so very
witty and whimsical, intelligent that the reader can enjoy, enormously, the
finesse and nuance of Schama's profound knowledge and clarity on historical
cause and effect as well as anecdotes which fill in the spaces we might have
in our understanding of Britain. Excellent in every way
3 people found this helpful
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Ruth A. Rouff
5.0 out of 5 stars Witty and erudite
Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2017
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Extremely well-written survey of British history. Schama is a master of his material and it shows in the text: witty and erudite at the same time.
2 people found this helpful
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Al Singh
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2014
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An extremely good source of British medieval history, with detailed information on the rebellions of Simon de Montfort and Wat Tyler that I have not been able to find in other sources. Readable and enjoyable.
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Anne Topley
4.0 out of 5 stars Molto frustrante
Reviewed in Italy on September 14, 2020
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Ci vorrebbero anche volumi 2 e 3 ma sembra che volume 2 non esista più. Perciò anche se è un libro meraviglioso, crea soltanto un senso di frustrazione perché non puoi continuare con volume 2.
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Beatriz M. P. Machado
5.0 out of 5 stars Abrangente e fácil de ler
Reviewed in Brazil on November 30, 2015
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Esta é uma história escrita em estilo elegante que faz da leitura um prazer imenso, quase um "page turner". Simon Schama é uma benção para os fãs de história, pois seu talento como escritor aumenta ainda mais a satisfação de aprender mais sobre alguma época ou região.
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Richard Sewell
5.0 out of 5 stars It's in the title :-)
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2010
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A number of the more jaundiced comments have upbraided Schama for omitting some specific aspects but to be fair to him,the title is "A History of Britain", therefore not to be regarded as the definitive "bible": as a History teacher, I agree with many others that his style and coverage is accessible, witty on occasion, knowledgeable and above all thought-provoking. I also have the DVD series but this book (and its sequels) can be read with enjoyment in their own right. The themes to which he alludes and the thesis he promotes (that nothing in this country's history is a given, and therefore not to be seen as, in hindsight, inevitable) are key to an understanding of where we have been, how we got there and that "who we are is who we were". Schama may well be "flavour of the month" for a good while yet, but even if he falls from this pedestal upon which many have placed him, let's not forget that he is a serious historian with a knack of making complex issues easier to understand. A very enjoyable read in every sense of the word.
15 people found this helpful
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T
4.0 out of 5 stars Good read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 1, 2013
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This is good book for a broad outline of british history. Well written and informative, with a good dose of dry humour - I would certainly recommend it - it starts with pre-Roman times and finishes at the end of Elizabeth I's reign.

However, as with many kindle books, there were several noticeable typographic errors, one in particular cropped repeatedly:
Henry III's being written Henry ILL's (with the LL in lower case (ll), which looks correct in certain typefaces, but not others)
This kind of thing is tolerable in cheap scanned copies of out of copyright material; but given the price being charged by the publisher for this book it should not have these kind of systematic errors.
3 people found this helpful
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Stephen Sutton
5.0 out of 5 stars So, so, good!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 4, 2023
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Simon Schama...! What's to say; other than "A Real Tour-de Force!" Concise; really, to the point with the kind of depth, one has come to expect from this "Quintessential Historian."
Loved it!
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