English History Made Brief, Irreverent, and Pleasurable (Paperback)

Here at last is a history of England that is designed to entertain as well as inform and that will delight armchair travellers, tourists or anyone interested in history. No people have engendered quite so much acclaim or earned so much censure as the English: extolled as the Athenians of modern times, yet hammered for their self-satisfaction and hypocrisy. But their history has been a spectacular one. The guiding principle of this book's heretical approach is that ""history is not everything that happened, but what is worth remembering about the past..."". Its chapters deal mainly with 'Memorable History' in blocks of time over the centuries. The final chapter recounts the achievements, personalities and idiocies of the royal family since the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066. Spiced with dozens of hilarious cartoons from ""Punch"" and other publications, ""English History"" is a welcome and amusing tour of a land that has always fascinated Anglophiles and Anglophobes alike.