Television at its best
Simon Schama is like the history teacher we should all have had, bringing the rich and fabulous history of Britain to life. Tremendous television and it is sets a benchmark for history programmes to match up to

Simon Schama's History of Britain, But Not Everyone's
Having thoroughly enjoyed Schama's short series on art history - Caravaggio, David et al - I was excited to see his epic History of Britain. The 15-hour experience left me stone cold and empty. Schama is very selective about what he believes constitutes a history of Britain, and generally his excerpts from the last millenium are all the grotty bits, He is also an expert at finding grot even among the great ages of our history. He belongs, I suppose, among the common despisers of Western culture, who like to bash the heritage and traditions that have made us what we are, and he does so in such appallingly superficial ways. In the episode on eighteenth-century Britain, for example, he is more interested in the evils of our colonial history and the birth of America than in the rather momentous Napoleonic Wars that were brooding and then exploding in Europe. Notice how whenever he lands a particularly large sucker punch at British history, he deftly uses the first person plural pronoun "us British" or "we British", a move which brings him into the territory of his subject matter in a particularly cunning way, as if to say "we are all guilty of this, me too." Given that he has resided and spent most of his time in New York City at Columbia University for many years now, his contempt for this country is apparent. Still, he built his reputation and esteem on debunking our country's history, and that earned him his fat professorship at an Ivy League University, so we can't be all that bad, can we? No country's history is without its share of guilt and responsibility, and not to admit it is a gross falsification of reality, but to be this damning with such mercilessly faint praise makes one wonder why he embarked on this project in the first place. "Great" Britain this is not.

Every home should have this
The only thing better and more informative than this superb piece of quality BBC tv is the enormous audio book version. Take the Victorian era - you get 12 hours of fascinating history read by Timothy West in place of a couple of hours of tv time, and the whole series takes forever to listen to! The audio series is vast, detailed and even more enlightening and shows Simon Schama's depth of knowledge is even more immense than the tv series indicates!
But the tv series is good to start with and takes you through the history of the isles in a way that schools don't appear to. This is so important because if you don't know why the UK is the way it is, and how it got like that, you can't know where it's going. A History Of Britain ought to be repeated once in a while, but until it is I say buy this and learn what made this country the way it is.

The greatest of all popular historians
I remember watching this series on television and being desperate to see the next transmission each time an episode ended. So I was delighted to receive the complete series on DVD!

Simon Schama is so engaging and charming that any slight problems viewers may have about the fact that he sometimes summarises "important" historical events can be counterbalanced by the clear presentation.

His choice of subject matter gives you a comprehensive overview of British history, covering all aspects from invasion to empire building to the decline of our international influence, and has so much to recommend it, it's hard to know where to start. He is a great story teller, the events he describe need little dramatisation but where there is some it is very impressive, visually. I also want to mention the music, which is highly original and really adds something to the whole tone of the documentaries.

Overall I would thoroughly recommend Simon Schama as a guide through British History - even the most dedicated of amateur historians will find something within his "History of Britain" they didn't know. And it'll probably leave you with a hunger to find out more.

History brought alive!
Simon Schama narrates the History of Britain in a way which is close to being addictive. Of course, any attempt to telescope over 1,000 years into 6 DVDs has limitations, but they are physical limitations. At the end, one is left hungry for more, and with the realisation that there are so many stories intertwined in our history that one can only sample a few of them at a time.
If understanding our history can help us get a better perspective on our present, never mind assist our aspirations for the future, then surely history should be a compulsory subject for everyone, no matter which academic theme they might choose to explore!

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