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The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain
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Summary
If you could travel back in time, the period from 1660 to 1700 would make one of the most exciting destinations in history.
It's the age of Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London, bawdy comedy and the libertine court of Charles II, Christopher Wren in architecture, Henry Purcell in music and Isaac Newton in science. In The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain, Ian Mortimer answers the crucial questions that a prospective traveller to 17th-century Britain would ask.
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- Kirstine
- Midlothian
- 21-09-17
Informative, interesting and entertaining history
I greatly enjoyed the author’s Time Traveller Guide to the Medieval England and am glad to say that this guide to the latter part of the 17th Century, following the restoration of King Charles II, is equally engaging. The author has a lively style of writing well-suited to narration and this period of history is full of events and changes in society that make it a fertile source of material.
The author has collected a mass of personal stories that enable one to imagine what life was like. It’s remarkable just how much written material there is from this period, not least Samuel Pepys diaries which provide some of the colourful details, but he was not alone in keeping detailed accounts of the life and times.
Most accounts of history focus on monarchies, wars and major events, whereas this book also gives a lot of details of daily life: what work people did, what they ate, wore, how they got rid of bodily waste and managed when they were ill. The book is redolent with the smells and sounds of the time. There are interesting facts about what life was like in the different strata of society from the fabulously wealthy to the desperately poor.
The narrator does an excellent job.
18 of 18 people found this review helpful
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- phil
- 19-09-17
Immersive history of a much puffed up era
Mortimer has a thamaturigal gift for transporting us back in time, it's as if we walk the streets. although grim, he forcibly disabuses myths of their being unhygienic. it largely boils down to their having different ideas eg miasma (bad smells) rather than bacteria. points such as this reinforce our reflections on how we'd behave.
Although I struggle to find much sympathy within me for the persons who make up the greater part of this book, Mortimer has given me cause for revaluation. The likes of Pepys and Evelyn are shown most humanely, their foibles enliven them. We hear much a do Pepys debauchery with maids, unfortunately this was an age of great legal inequality so neither the women nor his wife could protest. We have much occasion to reflect on whether we'd have been much different, this is a theme Mortimer is very good across his three time travellers books and his centuries of change.
There's more hard facts than one gets with say Ruth Goodman or Lucy Worsley; these do not disrupt the flow.
layback, eyes closed and imagine your self transported
12 of 12 people found this review helpful
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- Bill
- 25-08-17
A Tour De Force of the Seventeenth Century!
Where does The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
The 'top ten percent'! As with all Mortimer's Time Traveller's books this is another wonderful trip into a lost world that is brought to life through painstaking research and well utilised primary material/ sources. A brilliant book.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful
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- Julieb
- 16-11-17
excellent and so very entertaining and informative
I have learned such a lot about how much progress was made in the sciences and with book publishing.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
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- miss Amanda.Christie
- 20-09-17
Excellent look into 17th century life .
Fabulous insights- very familiar in some ways, but in others, thank God, a different world- some nasty! practices were going on then- I won't spoil it for you. listen up! x
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
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- Gadgetfanatic
- Hertfordshire
- 12-09-17
Excellent.
Excellent book. Very well read. Very interesting for history fans. More by this author please.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful
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- MR TJ PILLINGER
- 01-09-17
Moving and thought provoking
The narrator's soothing voice takes you on a roller coaster of emotions as you see the good and bad of the age.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful
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- Mary Carnegie
- UK
- 24-11-18
I’d give this era low rating on Trip Advisor.
But not the book, which is informative and lively. The dreadful Charles II has returned from exile, and for a while, many people breathe a sigh of relief. Life during the Commonwealth has been decidedly dull at best, fun is banned and it’s a world in black and white. With Charles, of course, fun is compulsory (even when it’s not enjoyable, especially for women).
He was not a wise monarch, like his father before him (IMHO, the worst Scotsman ever born!), but the colour is back in the world.
The Great Plague, the Great Fire of London, Pepys, venereal disease, scurrilous plays and poetry, but we also learn how ordinary people lived in all sections of the population, this time including Scotland, because at this date, the Crowns have been merged, but not the Parliaments.
It seems that, in history, the pendulum swings from stiff respectively to wild licentiousness (they’ve got William and Mary coming up).
I enjoyed the panorama of life at an interesting point in time.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
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- fuse
- 29-06-18
excellent
excellent book. achieves a hat it sets out to do which is entertaining and funny in parts. really sets the scene of that time and place.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
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- Dominic
- 23-06-18
historical
for anyone who wants to get a feel of a time period this is a good book. it actively builds a picture of the time.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful