Creator: Timothy West
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2003-08-18
RRP: £24.99
Price: £15.88
Review A History of Britain: British Wars 1603 - 1776 Vol 2 (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:The Fate of Empire brings Simon Schama's stylish and absorbing History of Britain to a stirring close. Of the volumes in the trilogy, The Fate of Empire is the most subjective, as Schama offers his own account of how the British shaped much of the modern world, and in turn were reshaped as a nation and a people by the experience of revolution, empire and war. Unlike the previous volumes, Schama only pays lip-service to the familiar narrative of British history. The great, the good and the unsung are all there-the Lake poets, Queen Victoria, Benjamin Disraeli, Mary Seacole, Winston Churchill and George Orwell-but Schama uses them as voices through which a different history of Britain can be heard. Ireland, India, the urban poor, suffragettes and striking miners are all restored to the national story. The emphasis on empire (along with India and Ireland the largest subject-entry in the index) is particularly welcome, although the finest hour of empire-the First World War-is dealt with all too briefly. Along the way Schama reveals himself once more as one of the world's finest cultural historians, with brilliant vignettes on Rousseau in England, the 1851 exhibition, Orwell's complex patriotism and much else, together with original insights on photography, the effect of empire on English vocabulary, and the post-war "colouring" of Britain. For beginners this is an excellent 21st century perspective on modern British history. For connoisseurs it is a refreshing reminder of how little British history the English really know. -Miles Taylor.
Creator: Peter Marinker
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1996-06-30
Dewey code: 903
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.78
Review Great Speeches in History (Classic non-fiction) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Publication date: 2007-10-04
RRP: £14.99
Price: £7.83
Review More Time for Politics: Diaries 2001-2007 / Random House Audiobooks:
Publication date: 2007-11-05
RRP: £25.00
Price: £13.75
Review The Story of India (BBC Audio) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 2004-06-07
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £9.00
Price: £5.88
Review Eyewitness, the 1910s: Authentic Voices of the 20th Century (BBC Audio History) / Eyewitness:
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2005-02-21
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £15.99
Price: £8.55
Review William Pitt the Younger / HarperCollins Audio:
Publication date: 2005-07-04
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £9.00
Price: £6.17
Review Eyewitness, the 1980s (BBC Eyewitness) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2008-02-01
Dewey code: 180
RRP: £16.99
Price: £9.04
Review Aristotle: An Introduction (Naxos Audio Philosophy) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2008-07-01
Dewey code: 940.21
RRP: £12.49
Price: £7.27
Review Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World / Tantor Media, Inc:
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2005-02-21
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £15.99
Price: £8.55
Review William Pitt the Younger / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Daniel Philpott
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2006-03
Dewey code: 900
RRP: £19.96
Price: £9.03
Review Our Island Story: From the Romans to Richard the Lionheart v. 1 (Junior Classics) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2008-07-01
Dewey code: 940.21
RRP: £12.49
Price: £7.27
Review Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World / Tantor Media, Inc:
Creator: Tom Griffith
Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 2001-04-18
Dewey code: 321.07
RRP: £16.99
Price: £9.03
Review The Republic (Non Fiction) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Creator: Maurice West
Edition: New title
Publication date: 2005-10
Dewey code: 111
RRP: £13.99
Price: £7.96
Review Very Short Introductions: Philosophy (Very Short Introductions) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Publication date: 2003-04-07
RRP: £15.99
Price: £10.57
Review Letter from America: Vol 1 (Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Isla Blair
Publication date: 2004-02-05
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £16.99
Price: £11.89
Review The Six Wives Of Henry VIII (CD) / Orion:
Creator: Cotter Smith
Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 2001-12-03
Dewey code: 940.5421
RRP: £20.00
Price: £9.76
Review Band of Brothers (Hbo Mini-Series) / Simon & Schuster Audio:As grippingly as any novelist, preeminent World War II historian Stephen Ambrose uses Band of Brothers to tell the horrifying, hallucinatory saga of Easy Company, whose 147 members he calls the nonpareil combat paratroopers on earth circa 1941-45. Ambrose takes us along on Easy Company's trip from gruelling basic training to Utah Beach on D-day, where a dozen of them turned German cannons into dynamited ruins resembling "half-peeled bananas", on to the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of part of the Dachau concentration camp, and a large party at Hitler's "Eagle's Nest", where they drank the his (surprisingly inferior) champagne. Of Ambrose's main sources, three soldiers became rich civilians; at least eight became teachers; one became Albert Speer's jailer; one prosecuted Robert Kennedy's assassin; another became a mountain recluse; the despised, sadistic CO who first trained Easy Company (and to whose strictness many soldiers attributed their survival of the war) wound up a suicidal loner whose own sons skipped his funeral. The Easy Company survivors describe the hell and confusion of any war: the senseless death of the nicest kid in the company when a souvenir Luger goes off in his pocket; the execution of a GI by his CO for disobeying an order not to get drunk. Despite the gratuitous horrors it relates, Band of Brothers illustrates what one of Ambrose's sources calls "the secret attractions of war. the delight in comradeship, the delight in destruction. [+]war as spectacle". -Tim Appelo.
Publication date: 2007-04-20
RRP: £8.99
Price: £5.02
Review Evacuate, Evacuate!: History Songsheet (Songbooks): History Songsheet (Songbooks) / A & C Black Publishers Ltd:
Creator: Tim Pigott-Smith
Publication date: 2005-06-02
Dewey code: 940
RRP: £17.99
Price: £12.59
Review The Somme (CD) / Orion:
Creator: Peter Jeffrey
Publication date: 1998-11-02
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £9.00
Price: £5.99
Review This Sceptred Isle: The Age of Victoria 1837-1901 Vol 10 (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
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Models & Brands:
A History of Britain: British Wars 1603 - 1776 Vol 2 (BBC Radio Collection), Great Speeches in History (Classic non-fiction), More Time for Politics: Diaries 2001-2007, The Story of India (BBC Audio), Eyewitness, the 1910s: Authentic Voices of the 20th Century (BBC Audio History), William Pitt the Younger, Eyewitness, the 1980s (BBC Eyewitness), Aristotle: An Introduction (Naxos Audio Philosophy), Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World, William Pitt the Younger, Our Island Story: From the Romans to Richard the Lionheart v. 1 (Junior Classics), Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World, The Republic (Non Fiction), Very Short Introductions: Philosophy (Very Short Introductions), Letter from America: Vol 1 (Radio Collection), The Six Wives Of Henry VIII (CD), Band of Brothers (Hbo Mini-Series), Evacuate, Evacuate!: History Songsheet (Songbooks): History Songsheet (Songbooks), The Somme (CD), This Sceptred Isle: The Age of Victoria 1837-1901 Vol 10 (BBC Radio Collection) |
