From Caesar to Boris: this brief history of England comes up very short
Herbert Butterfield, the renowned Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, once said history ‘is just one bloody thing after another’. Historians tend to see it as their job to tie all these things together with themes and theories, in the hope of creating a continuous thread. As history grows longer and longer, so too do history books. These days, the latest biography of Florence Nightingale, say, or a book about a particular battle in the Second World War, can stretch to 600 pages or more. I am as guilty of this as anyone: my recent book about The Beatles was 642 pages. The world is getting out of hand. Whatever happened to brevity?
This is why a book with a title like The Shortest History Of England holds such promise. At last, a chance to get to grips with the entire history of England, and all in a few hours!
‘Read in a day. Remember for a lifetime,’ reads the publisher’s slogan on the dust jacket. These words rang a bell. It was only later, after I had finished the book, that I recalled the introduction to 1066
And All That, the classic spoof on history by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman: ‘History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history repeats itself.’
From the title, I was hoping for a fizzy overview of English history, complete with colourful tales written in an easily accessible style for the general reader.
Since the author, James Hawes, is also a well-regarded novelist, I imagined he would have an eye for character, a relish for narrative drive and an ability to conjure up key moments in a few choice phrases. It soon emerged that The Shortest History Of England is not that sort of book at all. Instead, it is history powered by theory, and the theory is that, for the past 2,000 years, the Southeast of England has ruled the roost, and all the other regions have had to pander to it.
Eventually, this leads the author to the present day. Post-Brexit, he concludes: ‘The Party of the South realised that it was almost certain to rule England with the UK gone, and mobilised the common people, North and South, with extravagant promises of national liberation.’ At this point you realise that all of this short history, from Caesar to Boris, has been written with this conclusion in mind. It is, if you like, the tail that wags the dog. His guiding thesis – so dominant that it almost amounts to a conspiracy theory – is that the Romans and the Normans, with their fancy foreign ways, both established a pan-European elite in the South of England, and this elite has ruthlessly maintained its position – not only in politics and finance but in art and architecture – ever since.
For instance, his only mention of the beautiful city of Bath is as an example of how ‘ brand-new houses, built to strict new, imported rules, proclaimed that their owners belonged not to any one nation, but to a pan-European elite… Long ago England had been united under Norman kings, by an elite who spoke French and built castles all over the land. Now, the British Isles were united under German kings, by an elite who spoke French, Latin and Greek and built classical mansions all over the islands. Anyone who was anyone also had to have a classically proportioned townhouse in the Imperial HQ, London, and holiday/network at purpose-built, cod-classical Bath. It was all Greek to the common people of England.’
Phew! This is history as witnessed by Billy Bragg or Dave Spart.
‘Read in a day. Remember for a lifetime.’ In fact, the most colourful moments of history are whizzed through at such speed that I found them hard to remember to the end of the page. The book is also littered with countless maps of England, with numerous arrows generally pointing either to London or away from it, depending on the point that is being made. And some of the diagrams are so toytown that they call into question the seriousness of the book. For example, England’s finances in the first half of the 18th Century are illustrated by two little piggy banks, one with coins falling out of it, inscribed ‘Land war in Europe costs money’, the other with coins being put into it, inscribed ‘Naval war across the globe makes money’.
The author’s repeated attempts to jazz up the text with modern references can also prove wearing. ‘The Times they are a-changing back,’ reads one sub-heading. Martin Luther is described as ‘an international influencer’. After two sentences on the Popish Plot of 1678, we are told that ‘The Whigs invented modern fake news’. Yet ‘fake news’ has been around since before the dawn of time.
The closer the book gets to the present day, the more it expands. The first 70 pages cover 1,300 years; the final 70 pages just 100 years. By the time Hawes gets to the post-war era, he is happy to linger on very random characters, and his generalisations grow more obviously haphazard. ‘Graphic violence – almost always WW2 themed – and soft porn went mainstream. Men like Jimmy Saville [sic] and Gary Glitter discovered that if they just got on the telly, they could do whatever they liked.’
In fact, Hawes’s uncertain hold on the modern world calls into question his expertise on the ancient one. Like many modern historians he overstates the significance of the Sex Pistols, no doubt because they help his point about national decline and division. For all his talk of decline and division, most people preferred Leo Sayer, David Soul and Abba.
Then, when Mrs Thatcher comes to power, Hawes writes: ‘Southern culture was back: almost overnight, everything old and posh was cool.’ Yet the only evidence he can offer is The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, Hunter wellingtons and Barbour coats.
He even ropes in Harry Potter to aid his increasingly fragile thesis. ‘Under the magical gloss, this was a hymn to social mobility through a very specific kind of education, as practised in England since approximately 1170 AD,’ he asserts, with an air of desperation.
‘Graphic violence – WW2 themed – and soft porn went mainstream’