Civil War
Civil War

Author: Peter Ackroyd

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2014-09-25

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 144727170X

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Step into the tumultuous age of Stuart England with Peter Ackroyd's enlightening Civil War. Beginning with James I, the first Scottish king of England, it tracks an era of massive upheaval, ending with the dramatic flight of his grandson, James II, into exile. Civil War transports you to the heart of the 17th-century Britain, where you meet figures like James I with his shrewd perspectives on diverse matters, and Charles I, whose inept rule ignited the flames of the English Civil War. Ackroyd offers a brilliant – warts and all – portrayal of Charles's nemesis Oliver Cromwell, Parliament's great military leader and England's only dictator, who began his career as a political liberator but ended it as much of a despot as the king he executed. Beyond this political turmoil, Ackroyd also explores the rich cultural and literary contributions of the Jacobean era. This was a world where Shakespeare's masterpieces were penned, John Donne weaved his poetry and Thomas Hobbes crafted his philosophical marvel, Leviathan. Most importantly, get a glimpse of the extraordinary lives of common English men and women, their existence seeped in constant disruption and uncertainty. Civil War is a stirring account of a pivotal epoch, making it a must-read for history enthusiasts.

Foundation
Foundation

Author: Peter Ackroyd

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2012-10-16

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 1250013674

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The first book in Peter Ackroyd's history of England series, which has since been followed up with two more installments, Tudors and Rebellion. In Foundation, the chronicler of London and of its river, the Thames, takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death, in 1509, of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He shows us glimpses of the country's most distant past--a Neolithic stirrup found in a grave, a Roman fort, a Saxon tomb, a medieval manor house--and describes in rich prose the successive waves of invaders who made England English, despite being themselves Roman, Viking, Saxon, or Norman French. With his extraordinary skill for evoking time and place and his acute eye for the telling detail, Ackroyd recounts the story of warring kings, of civil strife, and foreign wars. But he also gives us a vivid sense of how England's early people lived: the homes they built, the clothes the wore, the food they ate, even the jokes they told. All are brought vividly to life in this history of England through the narrative mastery of one of Britain's finest writers.

Innovation
Innovation

Author: Peter Ackroyd

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2021-09-28

Total Pages: 630

ISBN-13: 1250135540

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Innovation, the sixth and final volume in Peter Ackroyd's magnificent History of England series, takes readers from the Boer War to the Millennium Dome almost a hundred years later. Innovation brings Peter Ackroyd's History of England to a triumphant close. Ackroyd takes readers from the end of the Boer War and the accession of Edward VII to the end of the twentieth century, when his great-granddaughter Elizabeth II had been on the throne for almost five decades. It was a century of enormous change, encompassing two world wars, four monarchs (Edward VII, George V, George VI and the Queen), the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the Labour Party, women's suffrage, the birth of the NHS, the march of suburbia and the clearance of the slums. It was a period that saw the work of the Bloomsbury Group and T.S. Eliot, of Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, from the end of the post-war slump to the technicolor explosion of the 1960s, to free love and punk rock, and from Thatcher to Blair. A vividly readable, richly peopled tour de force, Innovation is Peter Ackroyd writing at the height of his powers.

The Shortest History of England: Empire and Division from the Anglo-Saxons to Brexit - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History)
The Shortest History of England: Empire and Division from the Anglo-Saxons to Brexit - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History)

Author: James Hawes

Publisher: The Experiment, LLC

Published: 2022-03-15

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1615198156

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How the most powerful country in the UK was forged by invasion and conquest, and is fractured by its north-south divide. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. England—begetter of parliaments and globe-spanning empires, star of beloved period dramas, and home of the House of Windsor—is not quite the stalwart island fortress that many of us imagine. Riven by an ancient fault line that predates even the Romans, its fate has ever been bound up with that of its neighbors; and for the past millennia, it has harbored a class system like nowhere else on Earth. This bracing tour of the most powerful country in the United Kingdom reveals an England repeatedly invaded and constantly reinvented—yet always fractured by its very own Mason-Dixon Line. It carries us swiftly through centuries of conflict between Crown and Parliament (starring the Magna Carta), America’s War of Independence, the rise and fall of empire, two World Wars, and England’s break from the EU. We discover: why the American colonists of 1776 believed that they were the true Anglo-Saxons how the British Empire was undermined from within why Winston Churchill said the UK could only be saved by splitting up England itself and how populism spawned Brexit and its “new elite.” The Shortest History of England brings all this and more to prescient life—offering the most direct, compelling route to understanding the country behind today’s headlines.

Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I
Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I

Author: Peter Ackroyd

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2013-10-08

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 125003759X

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Peter Ackroyd, one of Britain's most acclaimed writers, brings the age of the Tudors to vivid life in this monumental book in his The History of England series, charting the course of English history from Henry VIII's cataclysmic break with Rome to the epic rule of Elizabeth I. Rich in detail and atmosphere, Peter Ackroyd's Tudors is the story of Henry VIII's relentless pursuit of both the perfect wife and the perfect heir; of how the brief reign of the teenage king, Edward VI, gave way to the violent reimposition of Catholicism and the stench of bonfires under "Bloody Mary." It tells, too, of the long reign of Elizabeth I, which, though marked by civil strife, plots against the queen and even an invasion force, finally brought stability. Above all, however, it is the story of the English Reformation and the making of the Anglican Church. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, England was still largely feudal and looked to Rome for direction; at its end, it was a country where good governance was the duty of the state, not the church, and where men and women began to look to themselves for answers rather than to those who ruled them.

A History of England in 100 Places
A History of England in 100 Places

Author: John Julius Norwich

Publisher: John Murray Publishers

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781848546097

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From battlefield to sacred building, from castle to cottage, from the Bridgwater Canal to Blackpool Pier, acclaimed historian John Julius Norwich tells the political, cultural, social, religious and economic story of England through one hundred key places you can still visit today. Part narrative history, part exploration of our national heritage, his wide-ranging selection of sites will stimulate, entertain, inform - and certainly provoke - a debate about the most significant moments in English history.