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An Accidental History
by Graham Robb
Graham Robb takes readers on a time-traveling adventure around the "spindly, sea–wracked island" he calls home.
Interweaving personal and historical narratives and making use of contemporary sources, Graham Robb's lively exploration of Britain through the ages peels back the layers of this island nation and shows how it came to be. We follow Robb as he travels along the warpaths of long-forgotten kings, under the chalk ramparts and grassy folds of ancient hill-towns, down the ghost trails of Roman and Saxon streets. Armed with poignant observations and an infectious love for his subject, Robb recounts the epic stories of wars and conquests, of feuding kings and rebellious peasants, of innovations and upheavals, from the creation of Stonehenge to the dawn of the railway, from the advent of multiculturalism to the recent political earthquakes―distilling a social, political, and geographical history of Britain that is at once panoramic and intimate, poignant and entertaining.
"With an entrancing narrative sleight of hand at work on nearly every page, this beguiles." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A tedious tale that oscillates between reminiscences and historical facts." ―Kirkus Reviews
"This is a book as much about the experience of history as history itself. … Learned and likeable." ―Sunday Times (UK)
"A dazzling and dizzyingly wonderful roam through Britain's past. This is history writing as you've never read it before." ―Jack Cornish, author of The Lost Paths
"Rediscovers Britain's past in unexpected ways, melding memory and observation with history and geography." ―Brian Groom, author of Made in Manchester
This information about The Discovery of Britain was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Graham Robb is the author of several award-winning books on literature and history. His book The Discovery of France won both the Duff Cooper and Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prizes. For Parisians, the city of Paris awarded him the Grande Médaille de la Ville de Paris. He lives on the English–Scottish border.
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