A Brief History of British Kings and Queens: British Royal History from Alfred the Great to the Present (Brief History, The)

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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 941.0099 EAN: 9780786711048 ISBN: 0786711043 Label: Running Press Manufacturer: Running Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 464 Publication Date: 2002-12-23 Publisher: Running Press Studio: Running Press
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Editorial Reviews: In one portable volume, A Brief History of British Kings and Queens offers a royal biographical A–Z, its pages lavish in details on all the rulers of the kingdoms within the British Isles, together with their wives or consorts, pretenders, usurpers, and regents, from Queen Boadicea of the early Britons to today’s Elizabeth II. This complete record of Britain’s kings and queens contains more than 1,000 monarchs and 2,000 years of fascinating history.
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Good Reference Book Comment: This author assumes that the reader lives in the UK and you happen to know where all the regions are located (I had to keep glancing at the maps). The interesting thing though is that he covers all monarchs from like 100 BC and all regions, but I ended up just skipping all those parts as I couldn't pronounce the names or the places (especially the welsh names how the heck to do you say "ap" or is this an abbreviation for something?). Also he covers each one so quickly you can't even get the chronology straight in your head. The book does have good geneological and chronological tables though. "Brief" is exactly information the book gives. Customer Rating: Summary: Hefty tome covering all Brit royals Comment: With individual portraits of all the kings of Britain, no one could accuse this of incompleteness, but the solemn tone and lengthy paragraphs make for a rather dry read. Billed as from "Alfred the Great to the Present" it begins long before Alfred, with overviews of the Celts, the Roman Occupation, and the Dark Ages. Ashley's organising principle, unity versus disunity within Britain, results in some confusing arrangement of material. For example, in the first Section, Kingdom Against Kingdom: Early Britain: after "The House of Normandy 1066-1154" he backtracks several hundred years to the Kingdoms of Wales (500-1240) and Scotland (850-1165). Then the narrative resumes in 1154 with The House of Anjou. This mine of information, though daunting at first glance, covers monarchs' appearance, character, consorts, political, social, religious and cultural history. Among 100 pages of appendices are lists of Roman emperors and governors, kings of British provinces, royal consorts, family trees. The massive bibliography, handy for historic royal watchers, precedes the index. You would probably want something more snappy and anecdotal on your shelf as well as this. However it's worth investing in as a reference source. More Reviews