Peter Ackroyd
The History of England, Volume 1: Foundation
Macmillan; 2011
This is the first in a series by Peter Ackroyd in which he charts the history of England (and he does mean England, not Britain). The already available subsequent two volumes cover the Tudors and the Civil War.
It is a thick tome — running to just shy of 450 pages of text, plus bibliography, index and colour plates — which charts the rise of England from about the year zilch up to the end of the Wars of the Roses and the accession of Henry VII. This is, I think, too much, because in that space it is almost impossible to cover the ground in any great depth — although Ackroyd struggles manfully to do so, and almost pulls it off.
Most of the book is political history: the rise and demise of kings, rebellion, war, parliament and tax; with each period (pretty much each monarch) being given its own, often long chapter. But in between there are short cameos, often just 3 or 4 pages, of social history on subjects such as the rise of the town, the family of a medieval merchant or ancient roads.
Even having read this book, I still struggle with sorting out who was who, who fought who, and why, during medieval times. For me this just does not hang together as a narrative, the sequence of kings is obscure and all the various plots and wars are just too unmemorable. So I found the social history cameos the most interesting parts of the book and wanted more of them and longer.
But that likely says more about me, than about Ackroyd’s writing, for he lays out, often in quite some detail, the machinations surrounding the rule of each of the monarchs from the late Saxons onwards. This is a discursive history which seeks to try to understand — using existing material — how each monarch got to where they were and stayed there (or didn’t); it is not a book of new material, hitherto unknown research, or amazing revelations. It is very much a synthesis of what we already know, perhaps approached from a slightly different angle, and to that extent it is an easy read.
In other ways this is not an easy read. While Ackroyd writes well, and I often found it hard to put the book down, the text is dense and it isn’t always easy to keep track of the dramatis personae. Which Earl of Warwick are we talking about? The one who has just had his head removed? Or his son? Or his father? Which is, I think, why I find this such a difficult period of English history to get a grip on.
So is this a book worth reading? Yes, I think it is if you want a good overview of how England got from the Romans to the beginning of the Tudors, and can manage to keep straight in your head who begat who; who married who; and whose head was removed and why. I was very confused about this period of English history before I started on the book. I’m a little less confused now; but it is still not crystal clear, which I hoped it would be. Which, as I said earlier, probably says more about me than about the book.
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆
All posts by Keith
Weekly Photograph
This week’s photograph is one from our garden. This is a magnificent Acer growing in a large tub on our patio — it is doing so well it is over 6 feet and we think has rooted through the pot and through the paving of the patio! But it is absolutely gorgeous, especially at this time of year when it has this wonderful golden/red leaves. The stems are naturally red all year and in Spring contrast with the delightful fresh pale green of the new leaves. This shot was taken about a week ago and is a composite of two frames.
Autumn Acer
Greenford; October 2016
From Agincourt to WWII
This is a very lightly edited version of something I posted earlier today on Facebook, but I’m repeating it here as I feel it needs to be filed for posterity.
There’s an interesting perspective from Martin Kettle in today’s Guardian under the banner
We can respect the fallen without wrapping ourselves in the flag,
as the Agincourt anniversary shows.
And I have to agree, especially as I see the BBC have already dusted off their never-ending supply of Remembrance Day poppies. Basically I’m with Evelyn Waugh who back in the 1930s described Remembrance Day as a disgusting idea of artificial reverence and sentimentality. Moreover I object to being subjected to what is now basically moral blackmail.
But note very clearly: I’m not saying be unpatriotic, not to remember and not to be grateful for the sacrifice others have made to protect our freedoms. I’m saying that the current public display of maudlin sentiment and obsequiousness associated with Remembrance Day (and everything around it) is nauseating and unnecessary and serves only to glorify war. Martin Kettle says it much better, and in much more measured words, than I can:
… if we are capable of thinking about Agincourt without wrapping ourselves in the flag, why not other later conflicts too? In three weeks’ time we will reach the climax of the annual military remembrance rituals. A century after the great war, these rituals have become more culturally hegemonic than ever before. Yet it is surely possible to respect the importance of history and to support events that bring peoples together while still feeling that … these particular rituals have now become unnecessarily oppressive.
At some point in the future … we will begin to let go of these rituals. One day, the head of state will no longer lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in November for the long-distant dead. One day, MPs and TV newsreaders will not feel the press of obligation to wear poppies on all public appearances …
For the present, people in public roles have little scope but to conform on such matters … we will be right to stop doing these things … and there is nothing inappropriate or disrespectful about suggesting that we would benefit from that time coming sooner rather than later.
We need to be looking and going forward, working for peace; not looking mournfully backward.
Something for the Weekend
Glasses maketh man and woman …
Your Interesting Links
So soon already here’s another rag-bag of links to interesting articles you may have missed the first time round …
Quite a long time ago Scientific American posted an interactive Periodic Table, but they have been doing some updates to it. Click the element for some basic information. May be helpful for those with yoofs studying chemistry.
So ladies, what if everything your doctors told you about breast cancer was wrong? Find out some of the realities ad decide for yourself whether you should have that mammogram. [Long read]
Staying with jiggling lady-parts … here’s why scientists are saying you should throw your bra away.
Moving down the body, Belgian sexologist Goedele Liekens is on a mission to sort out prudish British sex education. And not before time, says I.
In another medical piece, scientists now think that anything up to 25% of our genes work in sync with the seasons. And that may mean our central heating and artificial lighting are screwing our physiology which expects winter to be different to summer.
Here are just two of many recent pieces which have looked at the sleeping patterns of hunter-gatherers and compared them to our modern habits. Seems they aren’t so different as we thought. First from the estimable Ed Yong in The Atlantic and the second from IFL Science.
And now for the obligatory piece about our feline companions. It seems our cats aren’t so emotionally distant as we think and they do seem to be able to sense our moods.
So at last to the history section …
It’s right what they say: you don’t know what you’ve got until you look. An historian has found the earliest known draft of part of the King James Bible hidden away in a Cambridge college.
Those of us who live in London love to moan about London Transport. But have you ever wondered what London’s public transport was like in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries?
Back in the 17th century lots of amateur natural philosophers (what we would now call scientists) were experimenting with lenses and looking at the microscopic world. Mostly they didn’t understand what they saw and had to get artists to try to draw it for them.
Returning to London, here’s a brief history of Georgian London (1714-1830).
And finally here’s something totally mad … A Steampunk-themed café filled with kinetic sculptures has opened in Romania.
Oddity of the Week: Internet Connected
New! Amazing! Awesome!
Low-benefit (but Internet-connected!) devices now on sale (from February 2015 MacLife magazine):
- HAPIfork — Bluetooth-connected, alerts you if you’re eating too fast
- iKettle — heat water at different temperatures for different drinks, controlled by phone
- an LG washing machine — lets you start the wash cycle while away; provided, of course, that you’ve already loaded the machine
- Kolibree “smart toothbrush” — tracks and graphs “brushing habits”
- Satis “smart toilet” — remotely flushes, raises and lowers the seat, and engages the bidet — all features which MacLife touts mainly good for “terrorizing guests”.
Culled from Weird Universe.
Weekly Photograph
Time this week for some pussy porn from the archives. Here’s Tilly doing her cute wriggle act back last Spring.
Me, Wiggle!
Greenford; March 2015
Click the image for larger views on Flickr
Quotes
More words of amusement or erudition encountered in recently historical times.
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
[Haruki Murakami; Norwegian Wood]
The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.
[Haruki Murakami; What I Talk About When I Talk About Running]
I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for one self, one’s own family or one’s nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival, it is the foundation for world peace.
[Dalai Lama]
Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble.
[John Madden]
Nothing, not even sheer ability, can make up for the dedication required for a successful business career.
[Ray Eppert]
When you are dead, you don’t know that you are dead. It is difficult only for the others. It is the same when you are stupid.
1st October 1983. I mend a puncture on my bike. I get pleasure out of being able to do simple, practical jobs — mending a fuse, changing a wheel, jump-starting the car — because these are not accomplishments generally associated with a temperament like mine. I tend to put sexual intercourse in this category too.
[Alan Bennett; Diaries]
Every time you get upset at something, ask yourself if you were to die tomorrow, was it worth wasting your time being angry?
[Robert Tew]
I’d rather do something that’s considered “weird” that makes me happy instead of being boring and sad like the rest of you.
It freaks me out when people in religious institutions try to limit choice, as in the case of anti-abortion legislation. Abortion may or may not be immoral, depending on your view of life, non-harming, karma or whatever, but I think far more important than prohibiting someone from doing something you think is wrong is encouraging people to take responsibility for their own ethical choices. Religion shouldn’t be about keeping or forcing people from doing “wrong” but encouraging people to take control of their own lives and ethical choices, which is why framing the debate in terms of “choice” is so important.
[Gesshin Greenwood at http://thatssozen.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/how-you-spend-your-time-is-how-you-live.html]
Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.
[Richard Branson]
The kaleidoscopically flamboyant Ms Batmanghelidjh — looking more than ever like a pile of Aladdin’s laundry …
[Michael Deacon; Daily Telegraph; 16 October 2015]
For something to exist, it has to be observed. For something to exist, it has to have a position in time and space. And this explains why nine-tenths of the mass of the universe is unaccounted for. Nine-tenths of the universe is the knowledge of the position and direction of everything in the other tenth … Nine-tenths of the universe, in fact, is the paperwork.
[Terry Pratchett; Thief of Time]
The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles … when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.
[Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman; hat-tip Atomic Flâneur]
Something for the Weekend
Your Interesting Links
Lots of science (though hopefully nothing hard) and lots of history in this issue of links to items you might have missed the first time round.
The more scientists look, the more they realise that many of us are not just a single person but may contain elements of another. In other words many of us are chimeras and it is common amongst many species.
Meanwhile up the Himalayas biologists have found some 211 new species in the last few years: that’s 133 plants, 39 invertebrates, 26 fish, 10 amphibians, one reptile, one bird and one mammal. The latter is a noseless sneezing monkey. We still really do not know what’s out there!
We know crows are intelligent. In fact they are so intelligent that they not only recognise human faces, but they mourn their dead and will remember the identities of anyone who is a threat.
Periodical cicadas spend 13 or 17 years underground and then emerge all at once for a frenzy of singing and sex. Now scientists are beginning to understand how they keep track of time.
OK, so how small is the smallest insect? Well the smallest free-living insect is less than a third of a millimetre — almost too small to see with the naked eye. But it isn’t definitively the smallest, because even at this size it has smaller parasites living on it. Which is sort of mind-boggling.
As so often we return to the subject of nuclear accidents. Understandably there is a lot of research looking at the long-term effects of the Chernobyl accident on the wildlife and how it is doing after the people left. Somewhat counter-intuitively it seems to mostly be thriving.
Now a little light chemistry. Here’s a simple explainer of the nasty niffs our bodies produce.
OK so now a swift switch to technology. Britain’s telecomms infrastructure is in such a state that it is a wonder it ever works.
And on to even more historical technology. Archaeologists think they have probably found the wreck of Henry V’s warship the Holigost buried in mud of the River Hamble.
Another set of history nuts is proposing to build a Tudor warship on the banks of the Thames at Deptford (which was indeed a big Tudor and Restoration shipbuilding centre).
From Deptford it isn’t too far a stretch to the world of Shakespeare. And historians are now suggesting — based on decent evidence — that much of Shakespeare’s play writing was funded by some dodgy deals done by his father.
Fifty years after the death of Shakespeare we come to the heyday of Restoration diarist Samuel Pepys, who knew Deptford shipbuilding well. A new exhibition (from 20 November) at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich will explore London in the time of Samuel Pepys.
Pub quiz question: When did London first have horseless buses? Yes it is a trick question because the answer is a lot earlier than you think for it was when Charles Dickens was a teenager, back around 1827.
Around the same time there were several proposals to straighten out the River Thames, none of which came to fruition. IanVisits investigates.
Coming into the beginning of the 20th century, here is a collection of colour photographs of Russia in 1907-1915, before the Revolution.
IanVisits again, this time taking a look in the WWII tunnels under Clapham Common.
My penultimate choice is a bit more serious. Here is Michael Shermer, of Skeptic magazine, on Do We Need God? Unsurprisingly his answer is “no”. Equally unsurprisingly I agree with him.
Finally here’s the best offer you’ve had all year (again from IanVisits) … Get felt-up at an erotic show in Soho.