Roy Strong

If you are a lover of history or art, this book is going to enrage you. No knock on the author here: that it does outrage you is probably the point. Strong goes into a great deal of detail as to how the Reformation, the English Commonwealth, and sundry other disasters ensured that an enormous chunk of England's literary, architectural and religious heritage got destroyed. It makes for horrifying reading, laid out as skillfully as it is. And it is laid out skillfully, with an enormous wealth show more of illustration. A must-have for English history fans. show less

Here's a well-written history of Britain told as a continuous narrative from Celtic times to the Thatcher era. Names and dates do not intrude on the real story: the changing nature of national power and the development of commerce and culture. Best of all, Strong, a reporter and broadcaster, does not neglect Britain's great cultural and scientific figures, e.g., Chaucer, Shakespeare, Indigo Jones, and Newton. The author chronicles changes in the church from Henry VIII to the present, as well show more as the religious practices introduced by groups like the Methodists. The lost civil war that created the United States is regarded as a necessary learning experience. The reforms engendered enabled the British to defeat the French and control 25 percent of the world's population by the 1880s. A small sample of the topics covered include the Industrial Revolution, the outlawing of slavery, and the Reform Act of 1832, which broadened Parliament's power base. Strong's Britain is a turbulent, exciting story that reader Stephen Thorne narrates with passionate enthusiasm.

What thread runs through this sweeping tapestry? For Strong, it is the gradual emergence of class distinctions over the centuries, leading to their eventual breakdown in our own times. Characters come alive in this book; great narrative is developed; kingdoms, colonies, empires emerge only to disappear, but with a semblance of order and reason. show less

The book's title gives a hint to the personality and authority of its author, because here, in just over 300 pages, Sir Roy Strong has written one of the most fascinating tales of English village life over the centuries in which England has been "Christian". Certainly, it is about the church in the village - and compelling reading even when it constrains itself to the aesthetic and architectural developments within church design and furnishing - but it becomes gripping when it discusses the show more historical backdrop of events and beliefs which have moved the English.

I think that this is a great book. It may prove to be one of our best records of the church (and the Church!), and it is by no means little in its content and coverage. Sir Roy's light touch never lets the book become too solemn, even though he is making a plea for these buildings and their contents. show less

A 700-page narrative account of developments in literature, music, painting, architecture and the theatre from the Celts to the present day. The scope of the book is truly amazing. Yet it is impossible to avoid a few criticisms. First, it's really a history of the arts in England rather than Britain (Strong pleading that 'the word Britain has been used so often to mean England that its use here seems defensible'). Secondly, while ignorance means I am quite prepared co accept that the show more thirteenth century was 'an age of images' and to bow to his verdict on the significance of William of Wykeham as a patron, many of Strong's judgements on the modern period seemed designed co make life easy for himself. Hence Wordsworth in The Prelude was spokesman for a whole society, In Memoriam was 'the supreme representative poem of the early Victorian era' and The Waste Land is 'universally acclaimed as the central poem of the entire twentieth century'. Some of his 'entries', like the half sentence on Orwell, are so brief as to be valueless. The real worth of the book lies in the author's longer, more personal and more impassioned appreciations, as of Lord Clark. To explain the 'relevance' of such a book may appear otiose, but Strong is clear that, at a time of globalisation and ever-increasing speed, we in this country need a rock to cling to: 'That should be provided by a mutual celebration regardless of class, colour or creed, of the island's achievements in the arts and of those aspects of them which have set us apart.'

The final section of the book is wonderful: a lament for what has been lost in the face of populism, mass culture, and dumbing down. The reader cannot fail to be unmoved by the loss of high cultural values and a sense of cultural history and continuity in the new populist, uneducated, Britain. show less