Length: 1190 pages
I am still making my way through this wonderful book. But as crazy as my week has been I decided since I haven't finished another complete book, I wanted to review this one anyway as it is one you can read a little at a time, skip around in, treat it more as a "coffee table" type of book. That, and I absolutely love it. It is the kind of history book I will come back to again and again. The colorful pictures and sidebars alone are worth the price and even though I bought it on Kindle I am thinking of ordering the hardcover copy just to have the glossy pictures at my fingertips.
This book is organized into short chapters on every British monarch, beginning with the Kings of Wessex and starting with a brief history of Roman Britannia. It covers all the important dates and events in the lives of the rulers and the common people, while skipping too many details that would confuse and bore readers who might not have all the background knowledge to follow along easily. Although I consider myself to be better educated in this area than say the average American friend I know, there are many monarchs I know very little about and so giving a general overview of each King and Queen and the milestone historic events in their lives, allows me to see if I am interested in learning more about that person or time in history.
The sections included are: The House of Wessex, The Norman Kings, The House of Plantagenet, The Houses of Lancaster and York, The House of Tudor, The House of Stuart, The House of Hanover, The House of Windsor, and Royal Edicts. Beautiful pictures of landmark buildings, people, castles, and original documents are included and I spent a lot of time looking at those before I even started reading anything.
Another plus with this book is that it is not filled with dry and dull facts. The author states that he wanted it to be a "pageant of personalities" rather than a straight history book and he does a great job of focusing on the personal stories while also adding the necessary background of the time period to complement the subjects' life events.
The last section on Royal Edicts is a wonderful addition. It begins with the Laws of William the Conqueror and runs all the way to Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee Speech. As someone who is a bit lazy about reading authentic, primary sources when researching an event in history it was really great to have the major ones complied together and ready to read. There were some like The Assize of Clarendon or The Magna Carta that I know a bit about from reading historical fiction but had never bothered to look at outside of the novel I was reading. It just made this book that much more thorough of a source to pick up when I need to see a chronological timeline of rulers and resources.
If you are someone interested in the entire chronological timeline of British rulers while not wanting a gigantic, super detailed, time consuming tome this is the book for you. I have found other ones that focus on just Kings or just Queens or maybe a certain era, but this is the best one I've run across that fits in all the rulers with colorful, engaging stories and fascinating supplemental material. It's a perfect gift for the true Anglophile in your life!
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