A History of Britain

2007 review:
Reading this has been a long time coming. You see, back in January of 2003 I was struggling through my second semester of college and almost ready to give up. After a particularly hard Spanish class one day I returned home to my young family depressed and defeated. Then I turned on the TV to KBYU and their regular Tuesday speech given from the campus of Brigham Young University. That day (1/28/03) the speaker happened to be Professor Simon Schama from Columbia University. I vaguely knew he was involved in a new project involving British history so I hurried and threw a VHS tape in to record it.

That speech saved my college career.

Schama's personality and mannerisms are what I first noticed. He spoke well and looked the part. Then I listened to what he said: he spoke of the importance of history in the culture of any civilization. He quoted Cicero and Brodsky. He said there was a future for history. He actually told jokes about history! He showed clips from his new fifteen-part documentary called A History of Britain.

I was in awe of Schama, A History of Britain, and history in general (and still am). I was reenergized and ready for whatever that Spanish professor and anyone else who stood between me and my degree had to throw at me. I purchased the documentary, watched all fifteen episodes and became a bigger fan of Schama and his vulgar (from the original Latin meaning: common) and yet educated approach to my favorite subject.

Over the past three months I have been working through the first of his three books from A History of Britain. It's been a great read and I would recommend it. Schama's wit and word choice make you feel like he's a guy you're talking to on the street as the events he describes to you pass by. I particulary enjoy the way he makes bold and descriptive statements about certain events. For example:

"Historians like a quiet life, and usually they get it. For the most part, history moves at a deliberate pace, working its changes subtly and incrementally. Nations and their institutions harden into shape or crumble away like sediment carried by the flow of a sluggish river. English history in particular seems the work of a temperate community, seldom shaken by convulsions. But there are moments when history is unsubtle; when change arrives in a violent rush, decisive, bloody, traumatic; as a truck-load of trouble, wiping out everything that gives a culture its bearings - custom, language, law, loyalty. 1066 was one of those moments."
(From Chapter 2 'CONQUEST')

I did find that Schama rushed some events horribly (e.g. the Wars of the Roses - about seven pages) while giving much attention to others (e.g. the reign of Elizabeth I - about sixty-five pages) but that is really a historian's prerogative and I can't fault him too much for that. It is obvious that the documentaries came first and the books are here to expand on them, not the other way round. Whatever Schama chooses to focus on, he does very well and thoroughly, telling us about how events affected government, economy, royalty, the commoners, and others in between.

This book is beautiful both in content and in design with wonderful full-color pictures with descriptive captions throughout and a beautifully mysterious cover that evokes, for me, the wild reaches of Britain and its fairly unique position as an island. As I said above, I would recommend this book and the series it came from heartily!