A History of Britain
Stretching into the year 2000, Simon Schama's Complete History of Britain does not feign for a chronicle of the tumultuous events that shaped the British Isles and buffeted. What Schama can do is tell the story in gripping and vivid narrative terms, free of the fustiness of standard academe, personalising historical events by examining the significant characters at the centre of them. Maybe not all historians might approve of the real history portrayed here as shaped principally by the activities of women and men rather than by abstract advancements, however Schama's manner of telling it is a fantastic deal more pleasing as a result.
Schama successfully gives lie to the notion that the real history of Britain was temperate and mild, passing down the generations carrying up to speed sensible notions but steering away from more silly , ones that are revolutionary. Nonsense. History how it had been -- several times and as bloody, convulsive, precarious, hotblooded within an inch of haring off onto a completely different course is retold by schama. Schama seems to delight from the goriness of all history. Topics returned to include the wars between the Scots and the Irish and the conflicts. Schama talks not as much Kings and Queens but of idea-makers and amateurs like Orwell, as Britain becomes a constitutional monarchy. Still, along together with his pungent fashion and Schama makes history seem as though it happened yesterday, that the bloodstains perhaps not tender.
