Clear and erudite.

Succinct, comprehensive and balanced. Norman Davies delivers a masterful story of the Isles, while the narration is enthralling.

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Amazing listen

Brilliantly read.
Listen again and again and still learn something each time.
Well written.
Getting in touch with my past.

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Potted history of our sceptred/septic isle

Broad brush super speedy romp through the entire history of British isles and Ireland - the synoptic approach is very effective and delivers a zoomed-out bird’s eye perspective-changing result. Impressively grand scope.

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Really enjoyable

This is a great overview of Irish and British history. Given the complicated nature of it, it's good to have the whole story told in one volume. Each chapter is told in the context of the previous one and so helped me with the jubbled histories that I had in knew. I will definitely give this another listen at some stage. The narration is also excellent. My only critique is the lack of modern/20th Century Irish history.

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Good, but inconsistent.

In its title I saw hope that, at last, a book dealing with Ireland and Britain was going to be objective. The author does attempt to be just that. British history does constitute the majority of the book (disproportionately at times), yet Ireland is never too far away. The author goes out of his way to recount the development of national identities, reminding readers/listeners of the immense European influence (Gallic/French, Dutch, Viking/Danish,Saxon/German, etc) on Britain and the foolhardiness of speaking hubristically of an continuity to the 'English' nation, while ignoring the Celtic origins of the Britons, the excessive weight academics apportion to the Roman influence, the French speaking (and often French-based) 'Kings of England', and, of course the Dutch and German kings of later centuries.

The narrator, Andrew Sachs, has a nice voice, yet perhaps with the exception of French words (which he appears to relish) his pronunciation of non-English words, be they Irish, Welsh, Scots-Irish, etc. is awful to the point of them being at times incomprehensible. In the discussion of P and Q Celtic languages, the deficiencies actually impact on the thrust of the argument as heard by the listener. Inconsistency too is a problem, as Sachs adds all the Gallic flourishes to some French names - Henry is 'Oonree' - while Humbert is just that; Hum~bert, as opposed to Uum bear.

The last third of the book is all too rushed. The author appears to try to get through the British colonial expansion and contraction as quickly as possible - to the detriment of the book. He bounces around the twentieth century like a ping-pong ball, unsure where to place the emphasis.

His treatment of Ireland's later history has a number of inaccuracies that would call into question the standard of research - 'Thomas' Wolfe Tone? The Anti-Treaty side winning the Irish Civil War?

Not bad at all, but certainly not flawless.

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8 people found this helpful

Very interesting listen, poor performance

Would you listen to The Isles again? Why?

I would listen again, there is a lot of information in there so I'm sure there are parts I missed, and I found it really useful to put the history I already knew into perspective.

What other book might you compare The Isles to, and why?

This is a history book, it is well written but there is little to no narrative aside from the chronology of it.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator was unable to pronounce Irish words, he had obviously been given some grounding in Welsh which was good but his pronunciation of Irish words was so bad that I had trouble following who he was talking about and only pieced it together from my own memory of Irish history. And I'm not talking about Irish language words, I'm talking about people and place names, any Irish person could have told him how to pronounce the words, and it would, I think have been a quite basic thing to check.

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5 people found this helpful