Change - sometimes gentle and subtle, sometimes shocking and violent - is the dynamic of Simon Schama's unapologetically personal and grippingly written history of Britain, especially the changes that wash over custom and habit, transforming our loyalties.
What makes or breaks a nation? To whom do we give our allegiance and why? And where do the boundaries of our community lie - in our hearth and home, our village or city, tribe or faith? What is Britain - one country or many? Has British history unfolded 'at the edge of the world' or right at the heart of it?
Schama delivers these themes in a form that is at once traditional and excitingly fresh. The great and the wicked are here - Becket and Thomas Cromwell, Robert the Bruce and Anne Boleyn - but so are countless more ordinary lives: an Irish monk waiting for the plague to kill him in his cell at Kilkenny; a small boy running through the streets of London to catch a glimpse of Elizabeth I.
The first in a series, this volume paints a rich and vivid portrait of the life of the British people and their nation.
- ISBN10 1409018245
- ISBN13 9781409018247
- Publish Date 31 December 2011 (first published 5 November 2009)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Vintage Digital
- Format eBook (EPUB)
- Pages 352
- Language English