Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- Introduction: On the Character of English History
- 1 Roman Britain
- 2 Saxon England
- 3 The Anglo-Norman State
- 4 Common Law and Charter
- 5 The High Middle Ages
- 6 The Nation-State
- 7 The first Elizabethan Age
- 8 The Civil War
- 9 The Withdrawing Roar
- 10 The Century of Success
- 11 The first British Empire
- 12 The Age of Everything
- 13 War and Peace
- 14 Victorian Ages
- 15 Imperial and Edwardian
- Postscript
- Further Reading
- Index
Introduction: On the Character of English History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- Introduction: On the Character of English History
- 1 Roman Britain
- 2 Saxon England
- 3 The Anglo-Norman State
- 4 Common Law and Charter
- 5 The High Middle Ages
- 6 The Nation-State
- 7 The first Elizabethan Age
- 8 The Civil War
- 9 The Withdrawing Roar
- 10 The Century of Success
- 11 The first British Empire
- 12 The Age of Everything
- 13 War and Peace
- 14 Victorian Ages
- 15 Imperial and Edwardian
- Postscript
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
Boswell: The History of England is so strange, that, if it were not so well vouched as it is, it would hardly be credible.
Johnson: Sir, if it were told as shortly … as the History of the Jewish Kings, it would be equally liable to objections of improbability.
Dr Johnson gave as an example of the strangeness of English history Charles I's concessions to Parliament. ‘Related nakedly,’ he said, ‘without detail of circumstances, they would not have been believed.’ Anyone can test this for himself by reading the naked narration in Thomas Hobbes's Behemoth. What is wanted is not simply ‘corroborative detail’ but what the Doctor called ‘preparation for introducing the different events’: in other words, time, and space, and big books. ‘Short Histories’, more especially when they are intended to serve as text-books, produce incredulity. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it is the enemy of historical truth, and—as Johnson concluded: ‘Truth, sir, is of the greatest value in these things.’
A Frenchman has described the history of England as one of mankind's outstanding successes. If only for that reason it is peculiarly ill adapted to the demands of brevity. Success takes a lot of explaining and, perhaps, when it is over, excusing. Unless, of course, it be simply accounted to providential favour, which is a form of cheating on a scarcely less enormous scale than those ancient alibis which relied upon Divine chastisement for the destruction of empires from St Augustine to Bossuet.
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- Information
- A Short History of England , pp. 1 - 10Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1967