#241 England: The Autobiography (2005)

Author: John Lewis-Stempel (ed.)
Title: England: The Autobiography
Genre: History
Year: 2005
Pages: 420
Origin: a Christmas present
Nod Rating: 2 nods out of 5

 

The tagline for Lewis-Stempel’s edited collection of sources boasts: ‘2,000 Years of English History By Those Who Saw It Happen’. For the pedant – of which club the Worm is a firm member – it is noticeable that many of these accounts are not contemporary: some being written many years later after actually occurring. However, the Worm will let the editor off of such minor faults; it is (a) Christmas (book), after all!

England: The Autobiography is an interesting idea. The gathering together of snapshots from English history cannot – surely – go wrong. It begins with Julius Caesar’s account of invading Britain in 55 BC, and concludes (rather disappointingly) with the 2005 cricket Ashes win. O, how history unfolds. For the most part the book travels a well-trodden path: the Battle of Hastings, the signing of Magna Carter, the Black Death, the Armada, the English Civil War, Waterloo, the Diamond Jubilee, the World Wars, the 1966 World Cup, Churchill, and Thatcher. How very ordinary, you may claim.

Luckily, the editor sees fit to expand on this. Particularly within the entertainment and sporting sectors: the Beatles, the Sex Pistols, Wimbledon, and the birth of football. As well as – more interestingly – the various taboos of history: Richard I massacring his Muslim prisoners, an anonymous court recorder from 1300 noting sex in the country, the torture of a Jesuit priest in the Tower of London during the close of the Elizabethan period, public executions at Tyburn, as well as the combination of prostitutes and peers in a gin-palace from 1800s London. Yes, much better.

History is – as they say – written by the winners. For the most part this signifies that English history is that of upper-class aristocrats and the gentry. Thankfully, Lewis-Stempel references the rise of the “common folk”, as shown in the Victorian period: the injustice of factories, the Peterloo massacre, the Manchester slums, and the Chartist movement. All of which serves to make this collection a well varied and balanced one.

Writers within this book range from George Orwell to Bede, from William Shakespeare to Sir Isaac Newton, from Guy Fawkes to Friedrich Engels, from Samuel Pepys to Max Hastings. Therefore, the reader is (mostly) in good company. All in all, England: The Autobiography is an interesting read and worthy of a place on any bookshelf. It should be relied upon as a reference book, rather than anything more. Lewis-Stempel has chosen some wise passages, if on the whole most being particularly uninspiring.

Buy it here