Simon Schama's History of Britain

It's taken a while but I finally finished Volume 3 of Simon Schama's History of Britain this week, and the highest compliment I can pay it is that it made me want to keep delving into British history.

Admittedly that can be taken a number of ways, but as I say, it makes me want to know more, and it's just a shame that I can't get that "more" from him.

I started reading it a couple of years ago when I realized that what little I knew of British history was informed primarily by Blackadder. That's not actually such a bad foundation for understanding the historical sweep of Britain, ranging as it does from the Tudor era to the Regency and the First World War, with a bunch of notable stops in between. But while the first series pulls a bunch of dialogue from Shakespeare, I eventually found it worthwhile to find out more.

My dad suggested the books, but I actually knew about them from when I'd first moved over to Southend in 2002, as the show Schama did for the BBC in tandem with the books was on at that time. So I went and picked up a used copy of the first book from the late, lamented Bookbuyers in Mountain View, and made plans to get the next two volumes.

The second volume, covering the start of the Stuart dynasty, the Civil War and the Restoration, as well as the process of wars and conquests that created the Britain that lost its empire and pre-eminence, was devilishly hard to find, and it took a trip to London and a cool £25 to procure a copy. Volume 3, by contrast, cost even more, at £30, so I just got it from the library, two or three years after getting the first one.

Of the three, the third book was the most engaging for me. This is possibly because I thought I knew the most about the time period, from 1776 to 2000, which meant I was better able to follow along. The first was good, and did a fair job of explaining Roman Britain, but for some reason I really failed to engage with the second volume, to the point that I either need to read it again or need to pick up another book about that period.

(Incidentally, this illustrates the Marie Kondo method of procuring and disposing of books: she talks about only keeping things that "spark joy", which means only reading books when you buy them. I didn't with Volume 2, but did with Volume 3, which may explain why I liked it so much more)

As to the content, I can't compare it to any other histories of Britain, because I've never read any. But contrasted with some of the other histories I've read recently (such as on Italy, Spain and the World Wars), Schama's set is nicely complete and comprehensive. In Book 3, for example, he does a good job of anchoring chapters around a single personage, like Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill or George Orwell.

I contrast this approach with a history of Italy that I read last month, the Force of Destiny by Christopher Duggan, which omits a couple of important points in Italian history. The most egregious is the premature death of Count Cavour, who engineered the reunification under the Savoy dynasty and promptly dropped dead of exhaustion. Both are attempts to explore their respective countries through the cultural landscape and the writings of the time, but I suspect that Schama, with his greater space over three books, has room to do a better job.

Picking up the book at this time is probably also the outward expression of a newly formed homesickness for London. Between the months of unemployment/freelancing and adjusting to a new job, hanging around London as I did this winter seems more appealing. At the very least I was reading a lot more, thanks to my commute. So picking up these histories of Britain allowed me to get a bit of England-fix, of the kind that I usually get from re-reading Bill Bryson or something.

In any case, I do have another history of Britain on my bookshelf, The Story of Britain by Rebecca Fraser, which is so Tory that the cover's even a deep shade of blue. I've also been eyeing up other library books, potentially even ones focusing specifically on other parts of the British Isles than England - if there's a criticism to level at Schama, it's that he focuses very little on Scotland or Wales (though he does a great job in Volume 3 of drawing a parallel between the causes of the Republican movement in Ireland and the drive for Indian independence).

And now that I've finally seen the selection at the library, I can feel good about going back and delving further into this section, particularly the books that spark joy (and thus have to be returned in four weeks).