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Farewell the Trumpets
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Very entertaining
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The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting audiobook to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.
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Interesting story spoilt by poor narration
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After the overwhelming horrors of the first half of the 20th century, described by Ian Kershaw in his previous book as having gone 'to hell and back', the years from 1950 to 2017 brought peace and relative prosperity to most of Europe. Enormous economic improvements transformed the continent. The catastrophic era of the world wars receded into an ever more distant past, though its long shadow continued to shape mentalities. Europe was now a divided continent, living under the nuclear threat in a period intermittently fraught with anxiety.
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Rollercoaster
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Through a stellar cast of politicians, diplomats, spies and soldiers, including T. E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, A Line in the Sand vividly tells the story of the short but crucial era when Britain and France ruled the Middle East. It explains exactly how the old antagonism between these two powers inflamed the more familiar modern rivalry between the Arabs and the Jews and ultimately led to war between the British and the French in 1941 and between the Arabs and the Jews in 1948.
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An absolute Perfection
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Once vast swathes of the globe were coloured imperial red, and Britannia ruled not just the waves but the prairies of America, the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia. Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson's acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries.
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Makes you think
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Seven Pillars of Wisdom
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Although T. E. Lawrence, commonly known as "Lawrence of Arabia’, died in 1935, the story of his life has captured the imagination of succeeding generations. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a monumental work in which he chronicles his role in leading the Arab Revolt against the Turks during the First World War. A reluctant leader, and wracked by guilt at the duplicity of the British, Lawrence nevertheless threw himself into his role, suffering the blistering desert conditions and masterminding military campaigns which culminated in the triumphant march of the Arabs into Damascus.
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Hard to Start, then Astonishing
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Heaven's Command
- An Imperial Progress - Pax Britannica, Volume 1
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 20 hrs and 9 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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The Pax Britannica trilogy is Jan Morris’s epic story of the British Empire from the accession of Queen Victoria to the death of Winston Churchill. It is a towering achievement: informative, accessible, entertaining and written with all her usual bravura. Heaven’s Command, the first volume, takes us from the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The story moves effortlessly across the world, from the English shores to Fiji, Zululand, the Canadian prairies and beyond. Totally gripping history!
-
-
Very entertaining
- By Amazon Customer on 31-08-11
-
The Anarchy
- The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
- By: William Dalrymple
- Narrated by: Sid Sagar
- Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting audiobook to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.
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Interesting story spoilt by poor narration
- By Gillian on 09-11-19
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Rollercoaster
- Europe, 1950-2017
- By: Ian Kershaw
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 26 hrs and 29 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After the overwhelming horrors of the first half of the 20th century, described by Ian Kershaw in his previous book as having gone 'to hell and back', the years from 1950 to 2017 brought peace and relative prosperity to most of Europe. Enormous economic improvements transformed the continent. The catastrophic era of the world wars receded into an ever more distant past, though its long shadow continued to shape mentalities. Europe was now a divided continent, living under the nuclear threat in a period intermittently fraught with anxiety.
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Rollercoaster
- By scouse on 10-01-19
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A Line in the Sand
- Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East
- By: James Barr
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through a stellar cast of politicians, diplomats, spies and soldiers, including T. E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, A Line in the Sand vividly tells the story of the short but crucial era when Britain and France ruled the Middle East. It explains exactly how the old antagonism between these two powers inflamed the more familiar modern rivalry between the Arabs and the Jews and ultimately led to war between the British and the French in 1941 and between the Arabs and the Jews in 1948.
-
-
An absolute Perfection
- By Charles King-Tenison on 14-08-19
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Empire
- How Britain Made the Modern World
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
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Story
Once vast swathes of the globe were coloured imperial red, and Britannia ruled not just the waves but the prairies of America, the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia. Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson's acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries.
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Makes you think
- By Elaine on 01-01-18
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Seven Pillars of Wisdom
- By: T. E. Lawrence
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 25 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Although T. E. Lawrence, commonly known as "Lawrence of Arabia’, died in 1935, the story of his life has captured the imagination of succeeding generations. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a monumental work in which he chronicles his role in leading the Arab Revolt against the Turks during the First World War. A reluctant leader, and wracked by guilt at the duplicity of the British, Lawrence nevertheless threw himself into his role, suffering the blistering desert conditions and masterminding military campaigns which culminated in the triumphant march of the Arabs into Damascus.
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Hard to Start, then Astonishing
- By Eugene on 23-12-12
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Venice
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Venice stands, as she loves to tell you, on the frontiers of the east and west, half-way between the setting and the rising sun. Goethe calls her "the market-place of the Morning and the Evening lands". Certainly no city on earth gives a more immediate impression of symmetry and unity, or seems more patently born to greatness.
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Interesting but
- By Goosy on 07-03-19
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All Hell Let Loose
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- Narrated by: Cameron Stewart
- Length: 32 hrs and 17 mins
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The complete magisterial history of the greatest and most terrible event in history, from one of the finest historians of the Second World War. This shows the impact of war upon hundreds of millions of people around the world - soldiers, sailors and airmen; housewives, farm workers and children. Reflecting Max Hastings' 35 years of research on World War II, All Hell Let Loose describes the course of events but focuses chiefly upon human experience.
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40 hours long yet still felt too short.
- By MR on 10-09-16
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A People’s Tragedy
- By: Orlando Figes
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- Length: 47 hrs and 1 min
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Opening with a panorama of Russian society, from the cloistered world of the Tsar to the brutal life of the peasants, A People’s Tragedy follows workers, soldiers, intellectuals and villagers as their world is consumed by revolution and then degenerates into violence and dictatorship. Drawing on vast original research, Figes conveys above all the shocking experience of the revolution for those who lived it, while providing the clearest and most cogent account of how and why it unfolded.
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A good guide to the repeating history of Russia
- By Mikhail Tikilyaynen on 14-02-19
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Thomas Cromwell
- A Life
- By: Diarmaid MacCulloch
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 38 mins
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Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Thomas Cromwell by Diarmid MacCulloch, read by David Rintoul. Thomas Cromwell is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s. After Wolsey's fall, Henry VIII promoted him to a series of ever greater offices, and by the end of the 1530s he was effectively running the country for the King.
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Enormously interesting and very entertaining.
- By Campesque on 21-12-18
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France
- A Short History: From Gaul to de Gaulle
- By: John Julius Norwich
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- Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins
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John Julius Norwich (at 88) has finally written the book he always wanted to write, the extremely colourful story of the country he loves best. From frowning Roman generals and belligerent Gallic chieftains to Charlemagne through Marie Antoinette and the storming of the Bastille to Vichy, the Resistance and beyond, France is packed with heroes and villains, adventures and battles, romance and revolution. Full of memorable stories and racy anecdotes, this is the country that has inspired the rest of the world to live, dress, eat - and love better.
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A Love letter to France
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Vietnam
- An Epic History of a Divisive War 1945-1975
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- Length: 33 hrs and 48 mins
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Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido.
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Brilliant
- By Derrick on 20-10-18
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A Place of Greater Safety
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A tour-de-force of historical imagination, this is the story of three young men at the dawn of the French Revolution. Georges-Jacques Danton: zealous, energetic, debt-ridden. Maximilien Robespierre: small, diligent, and terrified of violence. And Camille Desmoulins: a genius of rhetoric, charming, handsome, but erratic and untrustworthy. As these key figures of the French Revolution taste the addictive delights of power, they must also come to face the horror that follows.
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Highly recommended
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The Cold War
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- By: Odd Arne Westad
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As Germany and then Japan surrendered in 1945, there was a tremendous hope that a new and much better world could be created from the moral and physical ruins of the conflict. Instead, the combination of the huge power of the USA and USSR and the near-total collapse of most of their rivals created a unique, grim new environment: the Cold War. For over 40 years the demands of the Cold War shaped the life of almost all of us. There was no part of the world where East and West did not ultimately demand a blind and absolute allegiance.
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One of the best books I've ever read
- By Anonymous User on 01-11-18
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One Summer
- America 1927
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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One Summer: America, 1927, is the new book by Britain’s favourite writer of narrative nonfiction, Bill Bryson. Narrated by the man himself, One Summer takes you to the summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world forever. In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day, a semi-crazed sculptor with a plan to carve four giant heads into a mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown, and finished it as the most famous man on Earth.
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Bryson hits another Home Run
- By Colin on 21-10-13
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Churchill
- Walking with Destiny
- By: Andrew Roberts
- Narrated by: Stephen Thorne
- Length: 50 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Churchill by Andrew Roberts, read by Stephen Thorne. Winston Churchill towers over every other figure in 20th-century British history. By the time of his death at the age of 90 in 1965, many thought him to be the greatest man in the world. There have been over a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts now draws on over 40 new sources, including the private diaries of King George VI, used in no previous Churchill biography, to depict him more intimately and persuasively than any of its predecessors.
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GLORIOUS! ROBERT'S SPECTACULAR LIFE OF CHURCHILL
- By Leonie Frieda on 16-11-18
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The Adventure of English
- The Biography of a Language
- By: Melvyn Bragg
- Narrated by: Robert Powell
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the remarkable story of the English language; from its beginnings as a minor guttural Germanic dialect to its position today as a truly established global language. The Adventure of English is not only an enthralling story of power, religion, and trade, but also the story of people, and how their lives continue to change the extraordinary language that is English.
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All the voices
- By Francis on 13-09-06
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The Korean War
- By: Max Hastings
- Narrated by: Cameron Stewart
- Length: 19 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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On 25 June, 1950, the invasion of South Korea by the Communist North launched one of the bloodiest conflicts of the last century. The seemingly limitless power of the Chinese-backed North was thrown against the ferocious firepower of the UN-backed South in a war that can be seen today as the stark prelude to Vietnam.
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A missing piece of history
- By Mark P on 14-12-14
Summary
The Pax Britannica trilogy is Jan Morris’ magnificent history of the British Empire from 1837 to 1965. It is an extraordinary achievement, as entertaining as it is informative, and as vivid and immediate as it is huge in scope and ambition. This final volume charts the decline and dissolution of what was once the largest empire the world had known.
From the first signs of decay in the imperial ambition in the Boer Wars, through the global shifts in power evident in the two World Wars, it offers a perspective that is honest, evocative, and occasionally elegiac.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
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Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- JONAH8208
- 21-11-12
Very Long, Educational and Fascinating
This review is for all three large volumes of Mr Morris's brilliant and exhaustive work tracing the rise and fall of the British Empire in exquisite detail. From the grand sweep of history to the obscure backwoods incidents and the always fascinating explanations of all sorts of things and "facts" that we take for granted today which it turns out did not happen in the way traditional history would have us believe.
Another amazing part of the book is as it was written in the 1960s there isno PC rubbish or mincing of words to avoid notional offense given to any race or religion, all are treated equally and their stories told in all the gory details good or bad - this is certainly not a glorious whitewash of the Empire's history it is honest and frank in every way possibe.
The most unusual thing for me are the Irish sections which in mostly tends to be glossed over in the UK and still is today, this however was a relevation to me on the course and history of the "Irish Troubles".
The whole thing is a must for anybody interested in World History, I doubt I could have sat and read the books but on Audio they are brilliant.
Jonah
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
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- Bryan
- 31-05-12
The British Empire Declines and Fades Away
This third volume in the Pax Britannica series picks up the story following Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee on June 22 1897 and takes it forward to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. Of course, it didn't immediately seem that the British Empire was in any sort of decline. Following World War I, the empire was larger than it had ever been with the additions of Iraq and Palestine and Arabia.
However, the carnage of the Great War (as it was then known) had sapped all the confidence from the English people and their conviction that they had the right to rule other people. Not all of them, as the ones living in the colonial possessions in India and Southeast Asia and Africa - but the conviction that powers an imperialism had gone away.
As always Jan Morris moves this wonderful history along with many personal observations from those who had actually been in India and Singapore and Port Siad. The sights, smells, prejudices, and actions of empire are beautifully documented. After World War II (or as this history calls it "the last great imperial war') the British subdivided India and skedaddled in 73 short days in 1947 leaving carnage behind as India's peoples killed each other with ferocity. And from then on they gave away their empire just as quickly as they could. Even Churchill couldn't stop the tide, and by the time of his death empire and colonialism were considered anachronistic.
This wonderful and compelling story is superbly narrated by Roy McMillan. His work on this trilogy has made me look for other things he has narrated simply because of his terrific work.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful
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- peter
- 15-05-12
Imperial history comes to life
Like the previous two parts, this is a masterwork which will appeal to anyone interested in history. It is by turns funny, tragic, personal, reflective, sad, and always entertaining. It could not have been written in the same ironic but respectful way by anyone of the previous generation, and perhaps not of the successive (my) generation.
The narrator is one of the best I have listened to, varying his pace, tone, accent and delivery with almost perfect judgment.
For a person new to audiobooks with curiosity about the Empire, I would recommend volume one (Heaven's Command) and this as terrific listens. Volume two is perhaps slower and, overall, less entertaining, but still well worth the price. The chapters in this book about the near east campaign in WWI, Indian independence, Ireland and the Empire between the wars, and the parts in volume one about the Indian mutiny, African exploration and the exploitation of Canada are some of the best audio listening you could get.
To listen to this is to disappear into a vanished and fascinating world.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful
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- Troy
- 02-10-13
From Conquerors to Survivors
If you've made it through the first two books of this series, you already know exactly what to expect. If you choose to start here because you're more interested in the post-Victorian reversal of fortune, then it's safe to say you could jump in and not really be lost. You'd miss out, but you wouldn't be lost. As in the previous books, the history is presented here in terms of overarching themes and anecdotes that paint a human face on the events of the time period covered. Morris' scholarship and storytelling is high caliber, and narrator Roy McMillan once again delivers as a knowledgeable yet personable guide.
Having once been a superpower, the decline of empire and disasters of war are painted vividly here. While such rise and fall is the cycle all great empires throughout history have faced, the character of the British people give this story a distinct flavor of its own. Where Victoria provided the face of the rise, it was Churchill who gave them the determination to see it through to the end, and the reader can expect him to cast a long shadow across the evolution of these years. It's not just the fortunes or the politics of the British people that have reversed in this era; indeed, I feel perhaps that it's their sense of pride. Before Victoria's death, the pride was the innocent knowledge that they could do anything because they were untested in that era. After, especially in the years of the two world wars and beyond, it's the knowledge that they have survived the impossible through sheer willpower. It's perhaps for this reason this story continues to capture the imagination of the historically-minded. If you fit this description, this book's for you.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
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- john
- 21-02-13
Nothing is ever as simple as it seems
An interesting review of how Britain obtained and then shed an empire and just how it all happened without a concerted plan or a real overall strategy. Not quite an "Accidental Empire" but neither a thought through plan to dominate the people of the countries they added to the collection. Worth every minute and dollar to learn interesting facts and to remember that it often takes a long time for the sense (or lack thereof) of a decision to become clear.
Production values in the audio is of the normal Audbile high standard.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
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- Reeka
- 20-10-19
Rule Brittania!
Brittania rule the waves! Phenomenal account of the end and reasons for the end of the British Empire. A must-read.
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- Lydia
- 25-06-16
Calling all Anglophiles and History buffs
We never seemed to get to modern history in school. This was a fascinating look at the piece of English history that I'm guessing most people don't know or have forgotten..
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- djbrocc
- 28-02-15
History for lovers of History
This is not for the historian, but rather for the lover of the human side of the story of history.