At least I have come to the end of Simon Schama's three volume millenial history of Britain. I always suspected that I might enjoy the final volume more than the preceding two, perhaps because I was 'in it' as it were. However, reading it was like being on one of those theme park roller coasters which jerks you along, zooms, changes direction suddenly, goes slowly for reasons you don't understand, occasionally gives you grand views or unusual close-ups.

I might have got on better with more chapters but perhaps the idea was to align with the TV series I have never seen. It was pretty clever the way things were linked together and I thought the marriage of looking at individual lives (Victoria, Orwell, Churchill, the Indian Viceroy who lolled in his chair like some neo-Roman but who actually had severe haemmorhoids) in some detail alongside grand affairs of state was carried off pretty well.

I was glad I had read the earlier volumes as I did come away with more of a sense of why Britain is as she is (or why Schama thinks Britain is as Schama thinks she is anyway) Again the illustrations added to the book and of course, for this period, contemporary photographs could be used, sometimes to devastating effect - for example the starving Indians.

Score: 3

53 pages into this book, and yet I feel as though hardly anything particularly astonishing has been presented to the reader here. If you are looking for a concise book about the history of Britain, I urge you not to read this book. Thus far, the first chapter has revealed itself as merely an essay on the relation between the American Revolution and French Revolution, and the Tory preoccupation with quelling the spread of the ideas found in Thomas Paine's 「Common Sense」and「The Rights of Man.」

Page 123: A bit better, but only because the narrative has entered the Victorian age, and has basically become the biography of Queen Victoria.

The section on the Raj was relatively interesting, but only when the narrative didn't wander and focus on insignificant details which the book, on the whole, tends to do.

There was too much negligible information regarding the lives of both Winston Churchill and George Orwell. I don't particularly feel Orwell's accomplishments warranted the excessive pages allotted in a book called: 「A History of Britain.」

I'll still read volume 1 and 2, for I hear those two are better than this third installment I've just completed.

I recommend this book, but only if you already posses a general understanding of the span which it covers.

A History of Britain Volume 3 is the companion book to the television series (which is also excellent). I have absolutely no imagination, so this book has something I wish all history texts included – lot of pictures. I have never understood this. I have read monstrous histories that hardly include a photo. If you are going to blather on about Disraeli, show a picture of his mug. Have you ever seen a newspaper headline like “Buxom Beauty Arrested After Falling Into Fountain” – and then no photo. The publisher should be indicted, given a fail trial and hung.

Volume 3 covers British History from 1776 to modern times. Naturally one volume covering 200+ years can not adequately cover a history this broad. It is a survey and one must pick and choose. In this case much time is spent on how Britain, the purported proponent of liberty stumbled into empire, managed to subjugate people for their own good and then eventually lost the empire. Very interesting.

A fantastic read. Every Anglophile needs to read this.

Not bad!

Not as good as 1 and 2

A thoroughly decent overview of the time period in question, though for all scholastic purposes the chronicle stops at the Second World War: the period after is granted only a fleeting essay. Entertainingly contemporary in its insistence that history is constructed of histories: that the events of the past were predicated on ideologies which themselves depended on selective or subjective perspectives on that which came before. Hence, plenty of space is made for literature; Coleridge, Wells and Orwell are given equivalent space to Wollstonecraft, Victoria and Mill, and figures such as Disraeli and Churchill are approached through the lens of their literary influence as much as their personal biography. Entertaining and knowingly selective.

Fantastically written, Schama focuses as much on society and culture as the political history of the era which gives it broader focus than efforts from Andrew Marr etc.

Simon Schama ends his narrative history of Britain with this third volume, ‘The Fate of Empire’, covering the era 1776 to the millennium. This final volume is in itself a five star work; ending an overall five star series.

At one point Schama recounts the young Churchill reading Macaulay and describing this historian as: “The epitome of what a historian should be: an engaged citizen, a public teacher for the times, and not least, an unapologetic best-seller.” Hmm. Is this at all tongue in cheek describing at once Macaulay, the future Churchill and of course Schama himself?

In this volume Schama is at his best recounting events from an oblique perspective, utilising throughout the British literary giants of the day to try to illustrate the growth of a distinct British identity as the island nation’s empire declines from its peak. With the American Independence and the French Revolution Britain had to follow or evolve and the internal conflict is illustrated through Coleridge and Wordsworth. The industrial revolution had left a changed workforce and a society that needed a voice, which Schama illustrates with a very personal account of Victoria leading in to the Edwardian suffragettes and growth of the labour movement using Shaw and H.G.Wells. Churchill provides enough literary reference of his own to cover two world wars but the extended reference to George Orwell and his seeming contradictions are added to brilliant effect to highlight the struggle between patriotic war effort and domestic socio-political upheaval.

I finished this after watching Danny Boyle’s eccentric and quirky Olympic opening ceremony, and whilst I am not suggesting that Schama’s history is as off the wall as that, it made me reflect on how Schama also looks to describe an event using and often less used character. The seeds of a ‘British revolution’ and the growth of a conservationist conscience are combined in the works of Newcastle’s Thomas Bewick whose etchings hid a social comment whilst he debated the need for change in the back rooms of ‘The Blackie Boy’ pub - it’s still there, I’ve drank there often and had no idea. Women’s emancipation tied to the French Revolution are seen through Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley’s mother, and the Crimean War uses Mary Seacole rather than the more usual Florence Nightingale.

To cover the whole of British history in under 2000 pages is always going to be difficult given that Britain once held such a prominent position in world events. The author has to be selective and concentrate on how each period shaped the next using a thematic style throughout. Schama achieves this using his background in art and is particularly effective when using literary characters in the later periods. As in his TV programs he can be occasionally irritating and his usually fluid style sometimes lapses into overly clever and confusing syntax. These are minor criticisms. If you want a broad-brush but effective introduction to this subject then I recommend.

As a history fan, this was a great read and just right for my short attention span!

Fascinating book. Schama's History focuses on what he deems most important and his profiles of Orwell and Churchill are essential reading in my opinion if one wants to understand the history of the 21st Century. I've read many books on Churchill and a few on Orwell. If one wants to get a vast understanding of both and why they matter, they need go no further than to read this his Third Volume in his series on "A History of Britain" Brilliant insightful minds like Churchill and Orwell don't exist now and that leadership and intellectual vacuum has never been more apparent than it is today.

His DVD Series is certainly worth checking out also, especially the "Two Winstons" segment.

Two things draw me again and again to Mr. Schama's works.

1. The wit and elegance that characterizes so much of his writings.

2. The intimacy and balance which he honors his subjects with.

This was a period of history that I knew relatively little about. So it is a delight to read a book that delves so deeply, so boldly into events and people that I really knew so little about.

I am also very appreciative that Mr. Schama is honest about the mistakes and triumphs of the history of the nation. I know of plenty of historians who would be quick to gloss over a mistake or failure, and it is nice to see that he does not. And of course, the balanced, realistic depiction he highlights for everyone from Victoria to George Orwell is a delight in and of itself.