Read any good books?
 

Probably won't get back to the UK for 3 years. I really want to read a good history book though.

I would like the history of Enland dating back 1500 years or so. Any good ones exist?

thanks

At the risk of reigniting the "Why do they make it so complicated" debate*, how about Norman Davies's "The Isles"?

*Because I'm assuming that when you say "England", you don't just mean south of Hadrian's Wall and west of Offa's Dyke.

Historical fiction, but Cynthia Harrod-Eagles has a BIG series of books beginning with the War of the Roses and following a Yorkshire family down through the centuries, presently up to the end of WWI. They are fantastic. It is called the Morland Dynasty series.

It's not highly rated by historians, but This Sceptered Isle by Christopher Lee (an adaptation of bits of Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples) is highly readable, if a bit too "Kings and Queens-y" for most modern taste.

Rightly, it's more about England than the lesser provinces, even though it calls itself a history of at least the island of Britain. It's also the pretty superficial version of English history from 55 BC that most people think they learned at school (actually we didn't: it's the one we assimilated from the world around us): no revisionism here.

As far as I know, no-one's written a decent total summary of the thousands of new insights into our history developed over the past 50 years or so.

My own current fave that includes recent research (written from the point of view of the landscape) is Francis Pryor's the Making of the British Landscape. A similar sliver, from the point of view of one village, is Michael Wood's The Story of England: an extraordinary account of one reasonably typical village from the time the Romans arrived till he turned up with a BBC camera crew.

One of my favorites, not a comprehensive history but a novel about a village during the plague years (mid 1600's) is 'Year of Wonders : a Novel of the Plague' by Geraldine Brooks. I work in a library and avoided it for ages thinking would I want to read a novel on such a subject. But do if you're at all inclined.

Last spring, while on my annual visit to the UK, I was in Derbyshire with a friend who took a detour to Eyam, famous as the plague village that isolated itself to prevent the spread of infection and is, presumably, the model for the village in the book. Quite a story!

I second the suggestion for Michael Wood's Story of England. There was also an accompanying TV series, though I don't know if that's available on DVD. Taught me a lot about some things I never covered at school, like the ins and outs of Simon de Montfort.

You might also check out these highly readable very recent works -

<i>A World By Itself; A History of the British Isles</i>, edited by Jonathan Clark

and

<i>A Radical History of Britain</i>, by Edward Vallance

and there is always something interesting in -

BBC History magazine - http://www.historyextra.com/

and

http://www.historytoday.com/

Quote <b>PatrickLondon</b>: <i>"Because I'm assuming that when you say "England", you don't just mean south of Hadrian's Wall and west of Offa's Dyke."</i>

Or even <i>east</i>!

To the OP - Simon Schama wrote and presented an extremely well received 15 episode BBC tv series a decade ago called "A History Of Britain". You should be able to pick up the DVD set cheaply and there were 3 tie-in books published too. Highly recommended.

More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_S...ory_of_Britain

Dr D.

>Or even east!<<

Yes indeedy. Oops.

Historical Fiction: Sarum - The Novel of England by Edward Rutherfurd

http://www.amazon.com/Sarum-Novel-En...tt_at_ep_dpt_3

And if one Rutherfurd book isn't enough, you can read his London and The Forest.