English History Made Brief, Irreverent, and Pleasurable cover art

English History Made Brief, Irreverent, and Pleasurable

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English History Made Brief, Irreverent, and Pleasurable

By: Lacey Baldwin Smith
Narrated by: Peter Noble
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About this listen

Here at last is a history of England that is designed to entertain as well as inform and that will delight the armchair traveler, the tourist, or just about 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". Thus its chapters deal mainly with "Memorable History" in blocks of time over the centuries. The final chapter, "The Royal Soap Opera", recounts the achievements, personalities, and idiocies of the royal family since the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066. English History will be a welcome and amusing tour of a land that has always fascinated Anglophiles and Anglophobes alike.

©2007 Lacey Baldwin Smith (P)2017 Audible, Inc. Europe Great Britain England Royalty Imperialism Middle Ages Winston Churchill Latin America United Kingdom War British Empire English Grammar
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A great pocket history,very well written and performed. It is concise but includes interesting but little known details of English history

Informative and entertaining

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Really enjoyable and learned a bit too (Earl Grey being an actual Earl). Performance was really good.

Loved it!

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A wonderful overview that I will listen to again .
Peter Noble has a liquid honey timbre to his voice and it is refreshing to get away from the American accent .

Beautifully written, researched and read.

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A interesting take on the formerly Great Britain. Predominately focused on the royal families from a historical perspective, yet told in an engaging, manner. Recommend for Anglophiles and those with a historical bent.

Humorous and captivating

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An excellent listen, Peter Nobel does a tremendous job on this book, great voice and just superbly read.
Lacey Baldwin Smith as written a classic which I thoroughly enjoyed, Felt at times it was a little anti-British so I researched the author who I found out was America but as I came to the end of the book perhaps I was incorrect to have this assumption.
It is a great listen and I highly recommend this book.

English History at it's Best.

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Really enjoyed the book, it was a great listen, which had no problems with showing English history warts and all.

Good simple history of the United Kingdom

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Loved it. Australian subjects should listen to this to understand our beginnings.
It confirms what we know and shockingly exposes what we didn’t.
I will also refer to this book if I ever tour Britain for places to go.

Brilliant

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This was a really accessible way to learn about a whole swath of English history and overall the bite sized summaries and introductions were done well. Although in some cases a bit more detail would have been great - I understand that was not the point of the book and it certainly gave me enough to go digging on my own.
All that said I wanted a bit more humour in the telling as the title was a bit misleading t the overall tone of the book and I found the lack f female history to be a bit of shame. I understand that most of the better-known histories are all about men and war and battles -monarchies and governments, but some social history and lesser-known stories of women who made huge differences in English history would have been interesting.

Overall though it hit all the expected parts of English historical record and there is an awful lot of it, so to get it all down in one volume in this way was a substantial and effective achievement.

The narrator did a great job

Entertaining introduction to English history

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No matter how much you know about the Royal history there’s always something else to add to the list. The writing was well read too. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about this history.

This was easy to listen to.

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This was great for a someone who didn't grow up in the UK or the Commonwealth, and missed these important bits of history in their school curriculum. Opens up the door for more, but is enough to get you acquainted with their rich and vast history.

A great intro to English history

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