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The English and Their History
- Narrated by: Stephen Thorne
- Length: 45 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: History, Europe
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Living History
- By Graham on 03-02-10
Summary
In The English and Their History, the first full-length account to appear in one volume for many decades, Robert Tombs gives us the history of the English people and of how the stories they have told about themselves have shaped them, from the prehistoric 'dreamtime' through to the present day.
If a nation is a group of people with a sense of kinship, a political identity and representative institutions, then the English have a claim to be the oldest nation in the world. They first came into existence as an idea, before they had a common ruler and before the country they lived in even had a name. They have lasted as a recognisable entity ever since, and their defining national institutions can be traced back to the earliest years of their history. The English have come a long way from those precarious days of invasion and conquest, with many spectacular changes of fortune.
Their political, economic and cultural contacts have left traces for good and ill across the world. This book describes their history and its meanings from their beginnings in the monasteries of Northumbria and the wetlands of Wessex to the cosmopolitan energy of today's England.
Robert Tombs draws out important threads running through the story, including participatory government, language, law, religion, the land and the sea, and the ever-changing relations with other peoples. Not the least of these connections are the ways the English have understood their own history, have argued about it, forgotten it, and yet been shaped by it. These diverse and sometimes conflicting understandings are an inherent part of their identity.
Rather to their surprise, as ties within the United Kingdom loosen, the English are suddenly beginning a new period in their long history. Especially at times of change, history can help us to think about the sort of people we are and wish to be.
This audiobook, the first single-volume work on this scale for more than half a century, and which incorporates a wealth of recent scholarship, presents a challenging modern account of this immense and continuing story, bringing out the strength and resilience of English government, the deep patterns of division, yet also the persistent capacity to come together in the face of danger.
Critic reviews
"Learned, pithy and punchy, with a laudable sense of narrative sweep and a bracing willingness to offer bold judgments, [Tombs's] survey is a tremendous achievement, and deserves to become the standard history for years to come." (Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times)
"Packed with telling detail and told with gentle, sardonic wit...[a] vast and delightful book." (Ben Macintyre, The Times)
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What listeners say about The English and Their History
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael Gleeson
- 17-07-19
Unbalanced and Biased
Claims to be an unbiased History of England, could not be further from the truth !! Anything England has done wrong in their history was only slightly bad and everybody was doing the same or worse.
Lied and glossed over atrocities done to Ireland, Scotland, India and Africa. Claimed they only moved into South Africa to free black slaves from the Boers, nothing to do with Diamonds and Gold found there. The concentration camps they put the Boers in and mass killed women and children were completely swept under the carpet. “History is written by the victors “
102 people found this helpful
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- D. D. Paxton
- 26-10-16
This is a masterpiece.
It's incredible that a subject so vast can be so comprehensively explored in one volume. Tombs manages it and does so with balance and insight. This is an exceptional work.
Far more than a chronological collection of facts and anecdotes, Tombs provides analysis which constantly appears somehow refreshing, vital, and incontrovertible. Perhaps this is why the book is recommended by people from across the political spectrum.
Highly recommend.
75 people found this helpful
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- Joseph Stenson
- 11-03-17
Can't recommend enough
A brilliant, informative book, great narrator, very clear and engaging. I would highly recommend it.
28 people found this helpful
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- jane crombleholme
- 11-06-19
Not my cup of tea
This is a very traditional top down look at history and the author’s political conservatism is evident throughout. You will find little here about class struggle and conflict. You also get a feeling that he cherry picks aspects of being English, whilst ignoring others to fit and support his political agenda. So not for me but I can imagine more UKIP supporting types would like it.
53 people found this helpful
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- m sinclair
- 20-02-17
A big commitment, easily paid off!
This is the first history book I've read since school.
It seemed daunting with the size of it at a nuts 45+ hours and it's taken me months to get through.
Please don't let this stop you though from taking it on.
This book has helped me to have such a vastly more expansive view of history from our own little island perspective.
Not only that but it's made me fall even more deeply in love with my own country of birth!
I am so very proud to be English!
Thank you Robert!
88 people found this helpful
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- Emily
- 02-08-18
Pretty Good
When Tombs writes that this book is a brick in our history, he is not wrong. At 45.5 hours long, it is a heck of a read.
I actually really enjoyed it. Parts of it, like the bits about the Middle Ages and the post Second World War sections were a bit of a slog. The post WW2 section basically consisted of Thatcher, bits of Major, Blair and the Scottish Referendum, and it’s like... yeah, but that’s not everything? So parts could have stood to be a bit longer, a bit more in depth, though with the way the book was written, it flowed and it made sense.
I really was not a fan of the narrator. I liked him for parts of this book, because he had quite a nice speaking method and he was enjoyable to listen to, but he lisped on words ending with s, and I never realised how many words ended with that letter until it was 45.5 hours of semi-hell. I had to speed the book up to 2x and 2.5x at time to overcome this.
20 people found this helpful
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- Paul
- 25-06-19
Biased and dull
It starts well enough, but when it gets to the more or less modern times - Victorian or so - it becomes very patently biased towards the colonialist, and hard-liberal-economy point of view, without much of an attempt at critical analysis or any sort of a balance; combined with hurray-patriotism - again, devoid of any criticality - it makes it rather cringesome to listen to. Modern historiography is something that happened to other historians, not this one, it seems. You get a slightly beautified version of a Whig stance instead.
The narration - mostly flat, but exaltedly intoning some bits - makes it worse. The narrative is equally flat, humourless, and is more akin to being hit on the head with a history book... for forty-five hours. The production leaves in some side noises like paper rustle, and what sounds like sharp intakes of breath.
14 people found this helpful
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- qwerty
- 18-03-17
Fresh view on broad canvas
Thoroughly enjoyed it. Well researched and presented. Quite a radical but curiously uncontentious broad canvas view of England, Britain and the UK and the world in general. The last remark put it in perspective for me.
14 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 01-02-18
Fantastic book, I thoroughly recommend.
I recommend to anyone interested in England or history. The narration is great and fits the theme of the book perfectly. This taught me so much of my country's history that the schools never taught.
My only problem and the reason this is 4 star instead of 5 is that the chapter segmentation in audible is weird, every chapter is around 20 but does not correlate into the chapters the actual book uses, nor buy context. This does not ruin this book however, just a slight inconvenience.
13 people found this helpful
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- Steve
- 07-12-16
Amazing, seems fairly balanced
Great for anyone unsure of English motivation and actions both nationally and internationally over the last few thousand years. A real eye opener to both the prides and shames of the English people.
11 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 15-06-17
Superb, educational, captivating.
Brilliantly written and narrated. Highly recommend this book. if you know nothing about the english then read this and you will know all about the english
1 person found this helpful
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- Al Dante
- 07-06-17
Excellent, with surprising details, super narrator
Mr Tombs has done a fine job of compressing the complex story of the English into a one-volume book. The great sweep may be known to many, but he teases out the social factors that make history come alive, and delivers the death blow to many misconceptions along the way. Thoroughly recommended.
1 person found this helpful