I Read Books: A History Of Britain In Ten Enemies

 

A History Of Britain In Ten Enemies

The ten enemies are Italy, Saxony, Scandinavia, France, Spain, The Dutch Empire, United States, Russia, Ireland and Germany, covering the history of Britannia from the Roman invasions to the twentieth century. In each case roots and results are breezily covered, Italy starting with the Romans but also continuing with Britain’s occasional conflicts with the Catholic Church.

Written by Terry Dreary, the author of the Horrible Histories children’s series, this attempts the same but for adults – real history, lots of curious anecdotes, many jokes, some very silly, some absurd, many starkly serious. For someone who knows a moderate amount of history like me, the broad outlines are not especially enlightening, but some of the incidents are amazing.

The book has a thesis, which is that Britain creates itself in response to it’s enemies, both from adversity and from opposition. Most obviously the Roman invasion creates a single, unified province; the Norman-French invasion transforms England and so the rest of Britain. Then fighting the French, especially in the hundred years war, creates a distinct political and cultural concept of England. And so to the present day with WW1 and WW2’s conflict with Germany continuing to shape the United Kingdom’s perception of itself.

It also has a message, that this doesn’t make Britain better or meaningfully different to other countries. That we might find things easier if we weren’t seeing them as enemies. Well quite! Of course it takes both parties to be friends, so it seems likely we will be defining ourselves by our enemies for a while yet.

Read This: Enjoyable, entertaining history of Britain
Don’t Read This: Makes history a bunch of amusing anecdotes, loosely strung together by increasingly tenuous themes