The English and their History
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The acclaimed account of the English people, now updated with two new chapters
'Masterful, an enormously readable narrative of the English people from the Anglo-Saxons to the present' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times, Books of the Year
In The English and their History, the first full-length account to appear in one volume for many decades, Robert Tombs gives us the history of the English people, and of how the stories they have told about themselves have shaped them, from the prehistoric 'dreamtime' through to the present day.
'As ambitious as it is successful . . . Packed with telling detail and told with gentle, sardonic wit, a vast and delightful book' Ben MacIntyre, The Times, Books of the Year
'A stupendous achievement ... a story of a people we can't fail to recognize: stoical, brave, drunken, bloody-minded, violent, undeferential, yet paradoxically law-abiding ... I found myself gripped' Daniel Hannan, Spectator
'Original and enormously readable, this brilliant, hugely engaging work has a sly wit and insouciance that are of themselves rather English' Sinclair MacKay, Daily Telegraph
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Proceeding from prehistoric times to the present at a commanding pace, Tombs (coauthor, with Isabelle Tombs, of That Sweet Enemy), an expert at the University of Cambridge on Franco-British relations, focuses on England and the English while paying due regard to their Irish, Scot, and Welsh compatriots. No one will confuse this work with the celebrated, sweeping multivolume histories of Macauley, Trevelyan, and Churchill, but this is nevertheless a brilliant distillation of a vast tale and arguably the finest one-volume history of any nation and people ever written. Rare is the historian who can maintain balance amid the interpretive snares posed by such a large subject poses, especially while making "memory and its creation an inherent part of the story." But Tombs succeeds, all the while clearly stating the bases for his judicious assessments. His lively coverage of social, cultural, and political history is dazzling, while his compressed reviews of such complicated matters as the Civil War of the 1640s, Victorianism, and English "decline" may be unsurpassable. Everyone from King Arthur to the Hobbit makes an appearance. It's hard to identify a source Tombs hasn't consulted or an apt quotation he's neglected to slip in. Comprehensive, authoritative, and readable to a fault, this book should be on the shelves of everyone interested in its subject. Maps and illus.
