I have always been interested in history, understanding what brought us to where we are and what made us what we are, as individuals and as a people. When I was young it was stories of our family as well as wider history.
The first history I was taught when I was in nu junior school was local history, the story of Cambridge, the town not the university; then we were taught a rather old-fashioned as it seems now history of our country, starting, after a brief description of cavemen, with the Phoenicians visiting and trading with Cornwall. Later I studied the subject throughout the rest of my time at school and went on to read it for my degree. Jump forward many many years and I actually taught it.
However,even though I have read a great deal, watched and listened to programmes and series a about history, I have huge gaps in my knowledge. I was really pleased to be given a book, A Short History of England by Simon Jenkins, described as ‘the complete story of our nation in a single volume’. Sir Simon Jenkins who was born in 1943 is a well-respected, writer, columnist and editor and has published many books.
A Short History of England starts in 600 AD, and gallops through the nearly 1500 years to 2011; it has filled so many gaps for me, I knew very little about the Wars of the Roses, the Tudors and Stuarts of the English Civil War, now to a certain extent those gaps have been filled. To be sure there is much which has been skimmed over, there has to be in a single volume of 300 pages, but I found it very readable and a great starting point for learning more.
Here is a link:
Lois Elsden 