Revolution: The History of England from the Battle of the Boyne to the… (2016 original; edició 2017)

The Revolution here is The Industrial Revolution - not that anyone described it as such at the time. But the Revolution that led to the massive expansion of the urban population, the establishment of an Empire based on trade, the establishment and oppression of a working class and a reinvention of the social order based on money rather than land, is well described and observed by Ackroyd. But as ever with this series, its long on description and short on analysis. Events happen, they are described, but we don't know why they happened.

Ackroyd is as ever much happier with the "great man" approach to history (and it is "man" - there's not a female voice to be heard here) than with social history. So we hear of the mastery of Walpole and both Pitts, the perfidy of Fox and sundry Whigs, and much of their personal foibles but very little of what their policies were, or why they succeeded or failed. Hanoverian kings arrive, preside and die, but we learn little of their priorities. George III suffers from porphyria - but there is little explanation of what this means and why his "madness" would come and go. America is lost, in the space of a few pages; there seems to be no particular consequences of this. The French Revolution arrives, with little discussion of its causes, other than hunger. Napoleon arrives, wins and loses battles, and disappears also in the space of a few pages, with no analysis of the cause of his success. For sure, this is a history of England, but factors outside of England have an influence on English events

The social upheavals caused by the Revolution are quite well handled, but again things seem to just happen rather than there being any analysis of their cause. Its easy enough to work out why the gin abuse epidemic took hold, but why did it stop as quickly as it started, to be replaced by tea of all things?

So why the relatively high rating? Because it is entertainingly written and the action skips along. But be aware that this is a narrative overview of the history of the period, rather than a detailed study ( )

Less gripping than Ackroyd's previous volumes (perhaps due to the social history), although there are some wonderful chapters, I read this over two years. ( )

Skimmed through the boring political parts, but the rest was good. ( )

This is the fourth book in Peter Ackroyd’s history of England, but this is one series you don’t need to read in order. This book covers events from 1688 to 1815: among other things, industrial revolution, the growth of Parliament as the supreme authority rather than the monarchy, the changing face of British empire, and the lives of various monarchs and parliamentarians. It is written with Ackroyd’s characteristic humour and well-chosen vocabulary (for example, his description of the ham in a famous ham sandwich as “exiguous”), and it crams a lot of information into a relatively short narrative. This book is one of the better ways to get a broad overview of English history and find areas of interest for more in-depth reading. ( )