History/culture of Britain - any recommendations for books?

[MaidOfKentishMaid]

I recently started learning more about British history by reading a book put out by the Home Office but found that rather superficial (and sometimes misleading) and wanted to get a deeper understanding of British history. So far I have read:

Life in the United Kingdom: A Guide for New Residents by Jenny Wales (official Home Office book)
The Shortest History of England by James Hawes
A Short History of England by Simon Jenkins

I have also watched all the episodes of Simon Schama's A History of Britain.

Are there any other history majors or buffs who could suggest other good books on the history of Britain or any of the separate nations? Names of book on the history of British art or private life as opposed to battles and monarchs would also be appreciated.

I just remembered I also read Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera.

Britons by Linda Colley is very good as I recall (read it ages ago) - about the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, the time when Great Britain was being forged as a unit rather than a collection of territories - examines the collective psychology of that and how it was influenced by things like colonisation and wars and trade.

Schama's series has a companion book which is worth seeking out, very readable. Penguin does a whole 'history of the British isles' series, loads of volumes but very comprehensive! Norman Davies's book 'The Isles' does the whole of British and Irish history but with a definite emphasis on what was happening in the island of Ireland, Wales and Scotland rather than focusing on England (as most British histories do)

Peter Ackroyd is writing a series on British history too, dividing it up into periods - the first one goes from pre-history to the Tudors and then the volumes after that are more detailed (Tudors, Civil War etc). Ackroyd can be a bit of an acquired taste but might be worth trying a sample.

Finally (I'll stop now) there is the British History podcast which is absolutely madly detailed, but very well researched and quite neutral in its stance - if you like podcasts and have a lot of time to spare (there are hundreds of episodes!) might be worth a try

(Actually sorry one last thing - in my opinion the very best single-volume history of England is '1066 And All That' by Sellars and Yeatman - it's a comedy book but honestly gives a weirdly accurate account of English 'schoolroom' history amidst all the jokes.)

British history goes back as far as Stonehenge and beyond so any publication that covers the Neolithic to Post Modern is going to be lacking in depth.

Personally I would start by picking any particular period that interests you , or failing that start with the Romans , and find an interrsting tome on that era. There are many places to look for these books. And don't just bury your head in a book. Go out and visit the various sites ; Skara Brae, Hadrians wall, Bath , Windsor Castle , Ely Cathederal etc etc etc. Take the kids on a steam train to Bodium Castle maybe.

There are so many places to see that it would take all day to list them.

Also, try Michael Woods History of England on DVD, it's is worth the price.

I've enjoyed some fiction books like 'London' by Edward Rutherford - no idea how well researched it was, but just the idea of vaguely following a family through millenia was interesting, just getting snippets of life in the different time periods. And the going to the Museum of London afterwards and learning more about the different times was great - I really like that museum. It is about London but a lot of it would apply elsewhere in the country too.

@PacificState Thank you so much! I've bought the Davies as an ebook, downloaded the first volume of the Ackroyd from the library to see if I like his writing, and have ordered the Colley and 1066 as physical books. Might be useful to get the Schama companion books at some point, as I couldn't get closed captions to work and sometimes couldn't understand what he was saying (on replaying sections I could sometimes work out it was an unfamiliar place name or prehistoric tool name or a latin phrase thrown in or an idiosyncratic pronunciation of a common word).

@Pyewhacket I will look for that series - sounds good. I am hoping I will be able to focus on a narrower period once I have a better overall picture. It is such a huge subject area. Doesn't help that I keep getting distracted and going off on tangents like trying to read Beowulf in the original for a couple of days.

@BotCrossHuns Yes, I like the idea of following individual lives through history. Thought the A House Through Time series with David Olusoga was brilliant for that.

@BotCrossHuns I was going to recommend the same - though I like Sarum best. Tells the story of history here through a series of lives.

And I think you can get a lot of history and culture by reading fiction - depending on what you read, it may not be 100% verifiable facts, but you’ll likely get further with culture by reading stories than by reading essays. Well, I do, anyway!!

@MaidOfKentishMaid oh wow, hope you like them! What a big project you've set yourself. I agree with other posters that you can get a lot from fiction and museums as well - if I'm unfamiliar with a period I often start by reading a novel about it because the dramatising of events helps me to sort out who's who and what's what, which then makes it easier to read a more fact-y book about the same topic.

An utterly exasperated history of modern Britain by John O'Farrell who was a Guardian columnist and writer for Spitting Image (and the book reflects that)

1066AAT is great, but be careful with the bits where you don't already know what it's talking about (I speak as one who read it as a child ).

Not a book, but the History of England podcast by David Crowther is fantastic.

He starts at the point of the Anglo Saxon invasions after departure of the Romans, and has just about got to Charles I (it's been going for years). I'm on my second time round of listening to it, and it has filled in so many gaps in my history, and really placed so much in context. Love it!

thehistoryofengland.co.uk/

For social history I really like Stuart Maconie - Hope and Glory for example.

@merryhouse Have checked out the first O'Farrell from the library and put a hold on the second. Have read the first few pages, and it seems like a nice break from what I'm reading now. Thank you!

@PacificState @Talipesmum I generally prefer fiction and love all the details about how people led their lives, what choices and constraints they had, what they believed. But I spent my youth reading so much English literature (along with my own country's) - Austen, Eliot, Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens, etc. - without really understanding anything about the historical context. I'm hoping to spend some time getting at least some grounding before going back.

I wish I could just read everything simultaneously!

I have enjoyed several books written by John Higgs, on very much the light/eccentric side. Watling Street was the first that came to mind, but for a twentieth century debrief, Stranger than we can Imagine might also fit the bill. A bit of everything, that won't send you off to sleep at night (too quickly).

For earlier history I’d recommend Neil Oliver’s A History of Ancient Britain and Ian Mortimer’s Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England. I think Mortimer also did books on subsequent periods but I haven’t read them. Terry Jones also made a tv series called Medieval Lives (with companion book) but you’d probably get just as much British culture from just watching him in Monty Python