A History of Britain - Volume 1
  • Published: 1 January 2010
  • ISBN: 9781847920126
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $80.00
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A History of Britain - Volume 1

At the Edge of the World? 3000 BC-AD 1603

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30 Nov 2011
Tr. Paperback
1 Jan 2010
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The first book in Simon Schama's acclaimed three-volume journey into Britain's past.

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.
  • Published: 1 January 2010
  • ISBN: 9781847920126
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $80.00
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Simon Schama

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. His award-winning books, translated into fifteen languages, include Citizens, Landscape and Memory, Rembrandt's Eyes, A History of Britain, The Power of Art, Rough Crossings, The American Future, The Face of Britain and The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words (1000 BCE - 1492).

His art columns for the New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for criticism and his journalism has appeared regularly in the Guardian and the Financial Times where he is Contributing Editor. He has written and presented more than fifty films for the BBC on subjects as diverse as Tolstoy, American politics, and The Story of the Jews and is co-presenter of a new landmark series on the history of world art, Civilisations.

portrait photo of Simon Schama

Also by Simon Schama

Art
Belonging
The Power of Art
Scribble, Scribble, Scribble
The American Future
Citizens
The Face of Britain
See all

Praise for A History of Britain - Volume 1

An exciting, intensely seductive presentation of history.

Independent

Remarkably vivid pictures... A decade on, Schama's study remains a terrific read.

Paul Lay, History Today

A bravura performance by the Lord Macaulay of our day.

David Cannadine, The Observer

Schama has a masterly ability to conjure up character and vivify conflict.

Ben Rogers, Financial Times

Popular history at its finest.

Express on Sunday

He remains a master storyteller, admirably and sceptically well read in current revisionist histories, and a wonderful guide to a new history of Britain.

The Times

A History of Britain, its text supplemented by wonderful illustrations, affords the rare joy of witnessing a scholar at the peak of his powers convincing the reader that he has a cracking good tale to tell and that he is loving every minute of the telling.

Literary Review

Simon Schama's A History of Britain is far more than the book of the TV series... The book is far richer and fuller, covering a huge span so economically that there is room for plenty of arresting detail... It is the sort of vivid history that keeps you awake.

Daily Mail