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Start giftingThe Shortest History of England
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreEngland—begetter of parliaments and globe-spanning empires, star of beloved period dramas, and home of the House of Windsor—is not quite the stalwart island fortress that many of us imagine. Riven by an ancient fault line that predates even the Romans, its fate has ever been bound up with that of its neighbors; and for the past millennia, it has harbored a class system like nowhere else on Earth.
This bracing tour of the most powerful country in the United Kingdom reveals an England repeatedly invaded and constantly reinvented—yet always fractured by its very own Mason-Dixon Line. It carries us swiftly through centuries of conflict between Crown and Parliament (starring the Magna Carta), America's War of Independence, the rise and fall of empire, two World Wars, and England's break from the EU. We discover: why the American colonists of 1776 believed that they were the true Anglo-Saxons, how the British Empire was undermined from within, why Winston Churchill said the UK could only be saved by splitting up England itself, and how populism spawned Brexit and its "new elite."
The Shortest History of England brings all this and more to prescient life—offering the most direct, compelling route to understanding the country behind today's headlines.
James Hawes studied German at University of Oxford and University College London, then held lectureships in German at the universities of Maynooth, Sheffield, and Swansea. He has published six novels with Jonathan Cape. Speak for England predicted Brexit; it has been adapted for the screen by Andrew Davies, though not yet filmed. His last book, Englanders and Huns, was shortlisted for the Political Books of the Year Awards in 2015. He leads the MA in creative writing at Oxford Brookes University.
Jonathan Cowley is a British voice actor who calls Los Angeles home. He is an accomplished narrator, having recorded over one hundred audiobooks and received AudioFile Earphones Awards for his narration of The Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen, The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart, and The Angry Chef's Guide to Spotting Bullsh*t in the World of Food by Anthony Warner. Jonathan holds a private pilot license and sports the latest in bionic technology, being the proud user of a bionic hand.