
A History of England, Volume 1: Early and Middle Ages to 1485
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Narrated by:
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Charlton Griffin
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By:
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Cyril Robinson
The history of England can be said to have begun with the arrival of Julius Caesar in 54 BC. Four hundred years later, Romano British civilization came to an end with the withdrawal of Roman military protection and the onslaught by successive waves of Germanic invasions. Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and Norsemen ravaged Britain for almost 500 years. The native Celtic peoples were displaced and driven westward into present-day Wales, where their descendants dwell to this day.
Although various Saxon and Danish kingdoms rose and fell, it was not until the Saxon king Alfred the Great consolidated the three great kingdoms of England into one and repelled the Danish invaders in the late ninth century that the concept of a unified, English nationstate came into being. But the Norman invasion of 1066 was about to alter everything. And chaos and misery were to follow.
Be sure to hear all four volumes of this magnificent chronicle by master historian Cyril Robinson.
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Simply Fantastic
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Substantively good, but dated in human matters
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Very Interesting
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All history is interpretive and selective, and this work is of course no exception. Robinson is straightforward and clear with his interpretation. Thus even if you don't want to go along with him at times, it's clear enough where he's taking you. I found it unusual in a refreshing way how he acknowledges his own interest in the history, with "us" and "our" references in place of feigned abstraction—small cracks in the historian's necessary illusion of unperturbed objectivity.
That's not to say that his interpretation is strident or heavy handed. He comes across as sincere and giving his best effort at objectivity. The characters and the story line are robust and three-dimensional for the most part. He paints with bright and dark colors alike, whether people, places, countries, times, etc. But the story is palpably told by a human, not an impersonal gatherer of facts. And more than that, he is an Englishman telling the story of England; and he doesn't pretend not to be aware of that. In not a few places, I could "hear" the twinkle in his eye in a certain turn of phrase or well-placed observation.
His selection of material seems masterful as far as I'm able to judge. The narrative is coherent and fluid, and he has a particular knack for focusing and clarifying the salient features of the story in the transitions between chapters.
The humor, human focus, and general tenor of his writing, as well as his general approach to history, remind me of Gibbon—a similitude that I hazard to guess with no objective basis was not entirely unintentional.
Excellent narration, masterful writing, great read
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Happy I read this interesting historical book!
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Poorly organized and dull
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I wish I had listened to the sample
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